Insatiable thirst for craft beer
Lagers made by the big breweries are on a multi- year decline, BMO report says
B. C. palates demand more sophisticated off erings.
The craft beer industry is growing rapidly in B. C., with more than 64 breweries already operating, new ones popping up all over and at least two large production plants being built.
Meanwhile, sales at larger breweries are falling as people’s tastes shift from mass- market beer to the more diverse selection of flavours offered in craft beers.
The new Tap & Barrel in Olympic Village has 24 B. C. craft beer taps and one beer engine dispenser. The restaurant’s owner Daniel Frankel decided to offer only B. C. beers on tap to provide a showcase for local products.
“We have such good products here in B. C. that we wanted to celebrate that,” Frankel said. The selection will change regularly, and every Tuesday a new cask is tapped with a proprietary beer made just for Tap & Barrel that will be served only for one week.
Vancouver’s Lundy Dale fell in love with craft beer about 12 years ago. She decided to do something to promote the industry and she is now president of CAMRA BC ( the Campaign for Real Ale, a consumerbased organization that promotes craft beer), the Director of B. C. Craft Beer Month, a certified cicerone ( like a sommelier for beer), and an organizer of Barley’s Angels, a group for women interested in craft beer.
“The beer is so incredibly good tasting, and you know you are getting a good product,” Dale said. “The brew masters are artists — they love what they are doing and they’re passionate about it.”
Craft brewers have doubled production in North America since 2003, while import beer’s market share has tripled. By comparison, lager beers — the core offering of the major breweries — have been experiencing a multi- year decline, BMO found in a report last week.
Frankel said the upswing in popularity of craft beer is because people are becoming “connoisseurs of quality.
“I think people are a lot more educated and that value today is less on price point, and more on quality,” Frankel said, adding that people also want to support local businesses and the local economy.
Sales figures from the BC Liquor Distribution Branch show that breweries with annual production up to 160,000 hectolitres ( 100 litres) had growth of 14.81 per cent in sales in litres, and 15.8 per cent in sales dollars in June 2012 compared to June 2011. Meanwhile, breweries with more production saw sales in retail dollars fall by 1.83 per cent in the same period and sales in litres fall by 1.7 per cent. People are buying more craft beer in the liquor stores now, more restaurants have started selling craft beer and more people are falling in love with the flavours, Dale said.
Iain Hill, brewmaster at the Mark James Group, operator of three brewery restaurants in the Lower Mainland, called it a “second renaissance” of craft beer, saying that the industry started about 15 to 20 years ago in B. C., and has surged again in the past five years.
British Columbians have expressed strong support for BC Hydro’s Site C hydroelectric project on the Peace River, according to a poll commissioned by the Crown corporation.
“There’s an underlying level of support for the project and an understanding, particularly these days, that there is a shortage of electricity in the province — that we are not energy selfsufficient — and Site C is one of the options for meeting that,” said Dave Conway, community relations manager for the Site C project. However, Conway noted, the poll, conducted July 8- 12 by Harris/ Decima, shows clearly that provincewide support is conditional.
“People were relatively clear: a lot of that support came from the perspective of it being done the right way; that it does go through an independent and vigorous environmental assessment process. If the outcome of that process is that this project is approved, then they support that.”
The poll shows 80 per cent of the 807 people sampled across the province support the dam or can accept it under those circumstances and providing Hydro takes into account the concerns of the people affected by the project.
“While many large infrastructure projects these days experience public opinion resistance, this has not been the case for Site C,” the research report on the poll states.
“The majority of people believe there is a collective responsibility to ensure energy supplies for future generations.”
However, the poll also showed a low level of public awareness for the Site C project. Only one in four people said they have heard a lot about the project and one in four said they had heard very little. Half the people polled said they have heard nothing about the project so far.
Support for the dam came when respondents were informed that B. C. will likely experience significant growth and electricity demand over the next 20 years and were asked whether they support or oppose a variety of different ways of meeting those needs.
The top option was independent power generation, such as run- of- river and wind generation, which 72 per cent supported. A major hydroelectric dam gained 64 per cent support. Most, 85 per cent of the people polled, said that they are opposed to energy imports as a way of meeting increased demand.
Hydro is one year into a three- year- long environmental assessment process for its $ 7.9- billion Site C proposal seven kilometres southwest of Fort St. John. It would generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity, providing enough power to meet the annual needs of 450,000 homes. Hydro estimates the cost of the energy it produces at $ 87 to $ 95 per megawatt hour, less than the average cost of $ 125 per megawatt hour of the Hydro’s most recent clean power call request for proposals.
The margin of error in the Harris/ Decima poll is plus or minus 3.5 per cent 19 times out of 20.