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but I was curious what motivated Armstrong to take on Goliath.
minimum of 10%. So, you will see, more than likely, the craft beer industry in this province double over the next half-decade – and then get even bigger. With the amount of microbrewers, craft beer will rise to 15% in the fore- seeable future. This is why we’ve committed to brick and mortar,” he said as he handed me a cool 5ozs of dark, crisp, Made in Nova Scotia lager. “Every lobster buoy is individual; they have their own markings so that fisherman knows it’s theirs. So we’ve adopted that.” Abyss did have, as described at spindriftbrewing.com, notes of toasted grains, coffee and chocolate malts – not to mention an elegantly smooth finish. It was just as Arm- strong told me earlier, “a sessionable beer.” It’s not a stretch to say that the initialism IPA is known around the globe. India Pale Ales are as ubiquitous as their ingredients. I confessed to Armstrong – who didn’t, by the way, have a bar towel over his shoulder – that I’d never heard of an IPL before. He assured me that’s common. “We’re a lager-focused brewery. Chances are most micro- brewers people come across are ale-focused. We decided there’s tons of ales flooding the market place. Everyday there’s a new one. But you don’t come across a lot of microbreweries doing lagers, or at least focusing on them. We make four beers, soon five, and they’re all lagers. And the difference in that is this: an ale can be made anywhere between five and fifteen days from the time it’s brewed to the time it’s packaged to the time it’s available for con- sumption. Lagers need 35 days, minimum, from the time it’s brewed until we put it into a package of some kind. Lagers ferment at much lower temperatures than ales do. The lager fermentation process is anywhere between seven and 15 days, depending on the alcohol content you want and how many times the yeast has been pitched – and then it has to lager for three weeks after that. So you get a much more refined product with a lot of natural car-
“The next big thing is small batch brewing and we discov- ered an opportunity in the craft beer segment. Craft beer has always been something I wanted to do – myself and Andrew. He has family lineage that goes back generations to brewers in Newfoundland. Although there are several microbreweries in Nova Scotia, still only five percent of business done at the Nova Scotia Liquor Commission is craft beer. When you look at developed markets south of the border and elsewhere in Canada, it should be a
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS • DECEMBER 2016
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