Cape Breton Post

Big Spruce launches all-Nova Scotia beer

One Hundred expected at two NSLC outlets in Cape Breton next week

- BY CHRIS SHANNON chris.shannon@cbpost.com Twitter: @cbpost_chris

A wild pin cherry tree on Jeremy White’s farm yielded a strain of yeast needed for his latest line of craft beer.

The owner-operator of Big Spruce Brewing of Nyanza also sourced his own on-farm hops, and a key ingredient barley came from a partnershi­p with Horton Ridge Malt & Grain in the Annapolis Valley.

Together, it produces the first “uniquely Nova Scotian” craft beer made solely of ingredient­s found in the province, said White.

He said it’s surprising a beer sourced solely from local ingredient­s hasn’t been brewed before. “The beer consumers’ palate has been rather underwhelm­ed for decades from the dumbing down of big beer and the creation of beer that’s moved more as a commodity and is brewed by companies worried about the lowest possible price per litre,” White said.

“Craft beer has moved people back into the realm of, ‘OK, instead of making (beer) cheaply,’ let’s brew with first-rate ingredient­s and out of an expectatio­n by the people making it that they’re going to make it the best it possibly can be, instead of the cheapest it can possibly be.”

Calling the new beer line, One Hundred, for the percentage of the ingredient­s produced in the province, it will be available for sale in limited release this week.

The official launch will take place Saturday at the Horton Ridge Malt & Grain Co. Ltd. facility in Hortonvill­e, Kings County.

While hops have been produced in Nova Scotia for the past couple of decades, it was the opening of Horton Ridge Malt & Grain in 2016 that saw the province’s first malted grains produced.

Earlier this year, several thousand pounds of organic malting barley and rye was grown, and subsequent­ly malted, by Horton Ridge. And Big Spruce Brewing produced several brewing yeasts isolated from a wild pin cherry tree.

It was a very scientific process, White explained.

“One of the most challengin­g aspects was securing a yeast source that was considered a Nova Scotian ingredient,” he said.

“A couple of years ago we embarked on a two-year wild yeast project and we were lucky enough to find wild yeast living on an eastern Canadian pin cherry here on our farm.

“We actually found three of them. And we worked closely with a yeast lab to harness that species of yeast and then tested to prove its effectiven­ess as a fermenter.”

The beer is comparable to the white beers of Belgium. White said it has been lightly hopped with organic Challenger and Willamette hops. The organic malted rye gives it some “spicy and floral notes,” he added.

As of Wednesday, the beer was only available in Cape Breton at Big Spruce’s facility. It’s expected to be on sale at Nova Scotia Liquor Corp. retail stores in Sydney River and on Prince Street in Sydney after Nov. 22.

It was an extraordin­arily busy summer for Big Spruce Brewing. White said the facility’s expansion last winter allowed for a major increase in production.

The facility has grown from an initial space of 800 square feet to a new location just across the street of 5,400 square feet. It is the first certified organic on-farm craft brewery in the Maritimes and only the second in Canada.

It’s now expected to top 500,000 litres of craft beer this year, far more than the initial expectatio­n of 150,000 to 350,000 litres a year.

The craft beer industry has seen major market share increases over the past several years.

In its second quarter report filed on Oct. 24, the NSLC highlighte­d craft beer sales of $3.9 million, an increase of 49.5 per cent over last year’s figures.

 ?? SUBMITTED PHOTO/BIG SPRUCE BREWING, FACEBOOK ?? One Hundred is the name of a beer produced by Big Spruce Brewing of Nyanza using only Nova Scotia ingredient­s. The Victoria County craft brewer partnered with Horton Ridge Malt & Grain in Kings County, which provided the organic barley, while on-farm...
SUBMITTED PHOTO/BIG SPRUCE BREWING, FACEBOOK One Hundred is the name of a beer produced by Big Spruce Brewing of Nyanza using only Nova Scotia ingredient­s. The Victoria County craft brewer partnered with Horton Ridge Malt & Grain in Kings County, which provided the organic barley, while on-farm...
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