Tracking your pint
How your draft beer gets from brewery to pub
Where does your beer come from? OK, I’ll be a little more specific — where does your draft beer come from?
When this topic came up before, I told you about how your beer gets from the keg to your glass, which of course is extremely important, but today I want to talk more about how your kegs get from the brewery to your favourite place to tip a pint.
Quidi Vidi is our biggest local brewery and they do it all themselves, from brewing and kegging to delivering around town. For Corner Brook accounts, kegs get trucked out to their service guys there to get delivered.
Most of the regular Molson lagers fans around here don’t have to worry much about transport, as it’s brewed on Circular Road in St. John’s and gets distributed locally by their own employees. The same is true of most Labatt products — they only have to go from Leslie Street in St. John’s to your local watering hole. For these Standard and Lite American Lager beer categories this is a good thing, as the shelf life for these products is generally held to about six months. That’s not to say they won’t last longer given ideal storage conditions, but the reality is that these are best served fresh.
But what about those of us who like to mix up what we drink if we’re out and about? Most people will recognize that currently, in Newfoundland, the selection of beer available on tap is pretty small. No surprise when you consider that the draft market in the province is only about two per cent compared to the national average of roughly 10 per cent. Keep your eyes open, as this is slowly starting to change.
The next closest to home to look for is Moosehead from New Brunswick. An interesting aspect of Moosehead is that Moosehead Distributing also handles the distribution of a number of other brands which are starting to have a presence locally.
Many will recognize Sam Adams Boston Lager brewed by the Boston Beer Company, and in our case it is brewed in their Breinigsville, Pennsylvania facility. From there it gets sent to Moosehead where it’s parcelled out for transport around Atlantic Canada.
Some of you may have started to notice Unibroue’s Blanche de Chambly on tap at places like Adelaide Oyster House, Magnum & Steins or Mallard Cottage. This lovely Belgian Wit-style beer gets picked up in Chambly Quebec by Sleeman Breweries trucks on their way from Guelph, Ont. with Sapporo lager. For those of you who didn’t know, Unibroue was bought by Sleeman who were then bought by Sapporo, so now that’s one big family.
I bet plenty of you immediately thought of Guinness when you started reading this, and so did I. Aren’t you all glad to know that Guinness Draught in Newfoundland comes from St. James Gate in Dublin, Ireland? Currently Kilkenny and Smithwicks are brewed there, too, and from there it gets shipped across the Pond to Halifax where it’s loaded onto Oceanex boats and sent over to us. Modern shipping efficiency gets these lovely beers over to our taps in plenty of time for us to drink nice fresh beer.
So who handles all of these kegs? The NLC doesn’t touch them, it’s all taken care of by Bassett Holdings Inc., where the kegs are stored in the warehouse until they get delivered to local bars and restaurants. The empty kegs have to go back to their owners so a lot of the floor space is taken up by empty metal until a full truckload is ready to go back to the brewery for a refill.
This is the norm now, but times are changing and soon we will have access to other Canadian craft brews and then the landscape of excellent beer on tap will look a little different. Feel free to ask for more taps next time you’re out for a pint.