The Food Issue
2015
Grains
West
38
Feature
Brewing
revolution
Alberta’s craft beer culture is more
accessible than ever before
By TYLER DIFLEY
T IS NOT THE CRITIC WHO
counts; not the man who
points out how the strong man
stumbles, or where the doer of deeds
could have done them better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in
the arena, whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood … who at the best
knows in the end the triumph of high
achievement, and who at the worst, if
he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who neither
know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore
Roosevelt
Graham Sherman, co-founder of
Calgary’s Tool Shed Brewery, lives by
those words. Many mornings, he reads
them as he prepares to face the day.
They serve as constant inspiration and
a reminder of the difficult road he and
his business partner, Jeff Orr, navigated
to convert their dream of starting a
brewery into reality. Only a few years
ago, they were home brewers—
tinkering with different recipes and
styles as a hobby while they made beer
for themselves and their friends. Today,
the pair’s 25-hectolitre brewhouse
can barely keep up with the enormous
demand for their beer coming from
thirsty fans across the province.
“Beer makes everyone happy,”
Sherman said. “When you see that you
can actually have that effect on people
around you with the beer that you’re
making, it’s addictive.”
Many Alberta breweries have similar
origin stories. Most commercial brewers
got their start making beer at home—
brewing batch a er batch in their
basement, garage or, in Sherman’s case,
backyard tool shed. The popularity
of home brewing has exploded, and
now anyone can try his or her hand at
making great beer. As a result, there are
brewers across the province at all stages
and scales of production: casual home
brewers, competitive home brewers
and commercial brewers of every size,
with plenty of overlap in between.
Until recently, Alberta was a hostile
environment for many small brewers
“I
