Niagara friends bring Ale Trail to web series
Six episodes total about 92 minutes — feature film length
Pints mixed with puns.
When three Niagara friends pondered a new web series on the region’s craft breweries, they didn’t want it to be cut and dry. A stuffy info-series.
They wanted it to be like a typical visit to a craft brewery for them — full of laughs.
The result is Tales from the Ale Trail, which co-host Nick Mirka describes as a “bro-mance” series showcasing local beer in an “approachable way.”
No serious scenes of taste testing. No in-depth analysis of the hops or barley. It’s a comedy series that just happens to promote some prime pints.
“We took a big risk in doing everything we wanted to do in one show,” says co-host Drew Williams. “Drink beer … that was first!
“We always had loose scripts, so we knew where we wanted to start and end the show. Sometimes we had a catalyst — how do we get from Point A to Point B? We didn’t want to just show up at a brewery and be like, ‘So what do you do?’”
Along with a third co-host, Chris Treschak, the trio visit six Niagara breweries, one in Hamilton, and hit the Albino Rhino Beer Festival in Ridgeway over the span of six episodes. All can be seen now on Bell Fibe TV1.
At Lock Street Brewery, they try ‘beer yoga.’
At Merit Brewing in Hamilton, they try their hand at axe throwing.
In the first episode, they hit the bike trail for a day trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake where they dabble in cuisine out of their league.
All have a basic premise, but once the cameras roll it’s everyone’s personalities that take over, says Mirka.
“We play characterizations of ourselves,” he says. “The response we’ve gotten so far is that people laugh, and want to go do what we’ve done.”
“In the scripted stuff, it’s more of an exaggeration of our characters,” adds Williams. “In the reality portion of it, we try to maintain that exaggeration.”
One thing they couldn’t do — get inebriated on camera. Which isn’t easy when your show is about beer.
“At Albino Rhino, if you look at that episode it looks like a party episode, but I had to fly a drone midway through the day, so I basically was trying not to drink,” says Mirka. “Which is hard to do at a beer festival.”
The six episodes total about 92 minutes — feature film length.
“One of our dreams has always been to create a feature film, but funding is just a tough thing to do,” says Mirka. “Here, we got funding and it ended up clocking in at an hour and thirty-two (minutes), and we’re like, ‘We kind of created a feature film.’”
A second season is already being scripted — pending Bell’s approval — and Mirka hopes to see the ‘Ale Trail’ extend beyond Niagara.
“Our ultimate goal is to have it be on a big scale,” he says. “We’d love to represent Ontario craft beer, and a silly dream of ours would be to do a season nationwide.
“But for now, we’re really proud to start on our home turf.”