The Stoke has long been a proponent of Mt. Begbie Brewing Co. This Revelstoke brewery has been making delicious craft beer for fourteen years here in town, and now it’s your chance to sample some of their wares. The new tasting bar is completed, and the brewery will be open this weekend for scheduled tasting tours on Saturday, August 1 and Sunday, August 2.
Mt. Begbie Brewing Co.'s new tasting bar is open for tours
Mt. Begbie Brewing Co. is proudly sponsoring the
Revelstoke Glacier Challenge softball tournament this weekend, and Revy is expecting thousands of people to descend on the city for a weekend of softball and revelry. The tournament has been sponsored by Kokanee for the past twenty one years, so it’s certainly a coup for Begbie Brewing and it is a chance to make the tourney feel more local. Give them a call at (250) 837-2756 or stop by their 1st St. location.
Cans bravely lining up to be filled for our drinking enjoyment
I sat down with founder and manager Tracey Larsen to talk about what she loves about running a small brewery with her husband Bart.
You started Mt. Begbie Brewing Co. in 1996, so you’ve got a long history here already. What brought you to Revelstoke?
My husband (brewer and nuclear physicist Bart Larsen) grew up here initially, so we’re familiar with the area and his family is here. For us though, it was a lifestyle change. We were in Vancouver, and wanting to just get out of the city — we’re mountain bikers, and hikers, and skiers, so it was ‘let’s go find a place where we want to live and create a job for ourselves!’
So you decided to start your own business. Why beer?
Why does a nuclear physicist start a brewery? Well, Bart was always an avid home brewer, and it started off like everybody else with the stove kits. But then being from the science background, he wanted to do things the scientific way and study and learn, so it went from the simple cans to adding his own grains, and then he started buying little hand-held malt mills. He’d add his own grain to make more flavourful, full-bodied beer. So it just evolved.
Can you tell me a little about the art of brewing?
The ways you combine all the ingredients subtly change recipes. We experiment with our beers a little bit, but we do it very subtly so the average person might not notice that we’re tweaking a recipe to the way the brewers want it. So it’s part science and part creative, combining the flavours to get that profile you want.
What’s your favourite part of running a brewery?
I like getting the accolades back from people. We get emails from all over, saying ‘I was in Revelstoke and I tried your beer’ or ‘I had your beer in Vancouver and loved it,’ so it’s really nice to hear stuff like that. I like meeting people.
kegs of beer fill the brewery's back rooms
That was predominantly Bart studying what different hops did, and the characters that they lent … from his home brewing days, he transferred some of his recipes. Our High Country Kolsch recipe is back from when he was twentyish, home brewing. So it’s just trial and error, figuring out the next beer you want to do and then working out a flavour profile. We tend to do seasonal summer and winter, and those tend to be our more experimental beers. We tend to have fun with them.
How did you choose the pictures on your labels?
Almost all of those come from the Revelstoke Museum and Archives. We started with it many years ago. Beer is historical — we’ve been brewing beer for many years, back to the ancient Greeks, and there is a lot of brewing history in Revelstoke. There have been numerous breweries and distilleries here, so it was a jumping off point to keep that sort of history going … We just decided that we needed to be seen and no one was doing photographs. Still not many people do photographs on their wine or their beer. We wanted to promote Revelstoke as well and its history, and we’ve continued with that. We have fun coming up with the names and the graphics.
Have you noticed a real resurgence in the desire for microbrew and craft beer?
Yes … sales figures say that the major breweries are staying constant, while the imports and craft brews are on a steady incline. I think people are not drinking as much, but investing in better quality. They’re paying a little bit more for higher quality beer, and maybe less of a hangover. It’s become more of an art — you can talk about the qualities of the beer. It’s not just cheap swill anymore.
This year Mt. Begbie Brewing Co. is sponsoring the Revelstoke Glacier Challenge Tournament. How did you decide to get involved?
The organizing committee actually approached us. It’s always been Kokanee, and we always respected it as their tournament. But the organizing committee knew we were getting into producing beer in cans (they didn’t want to tackle doing draft for a big event), so they approached us. It wasn’t that they were dissatisfied with the other company, but they wanted it to be more local. They support local businesses and talents for this tournament. They’re very community minded. It’s not about making money — it’s about bringing people into the community, and boosting the economy in this community.
Read the full interview in the Revelstoke Times Review online. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to enjoy an ice-cold Attila the Honey.
driiiiiinkkkkk meeeeeeeee
