my favourite style of beer. I like a traditional dry stout but we’ve added the tiniest bit of lactose sugar to give it some body and a tiny bit of sweetener to give it that chocolate milk taste. It’s not overly milky and it’s not overly chocolat- ey. They’ve all made a big impact at Vancouver Craft Beer Week, which in terms of competitions is the one we’re the most involved in. We are going to start being more involved in the North Shore Craft Beer Week, which just had its first year last year so we’re hoping to start helping to make that a much bigger deal. It’s going to have some cool hiking trails so you can kind of go from brewery to brewery – and it's all along a bus route as well so you can easily do the whole thing in a day. “It balances really well with anything kind of creamy and it’s also a fantastic dessert beer.” We are fortunate to have so many really good craft brew- eries here in North Vancouver. You can start way out in Deep Cove, which is absolutely gorgeous, and then you can make your way through Fountain Bridge and then down to Lonsdale where there are beers always brewing. Then you can head down to the sea for more beautiful views and great beer and great food at Greenleaf and Black Kettle, as well – and then there’s us. We have a beautiful patio in back. We really want people to start making a bigger deal about the North Shore Craft Beer Festival because it’s so much fun!” “We’ve got a lot on the horizon at Hearthstone. We’ve got a Trail Mix beer coming out in the spring, for instance. You know, when the people start getting back into those mountains they want a nice nutty beer that’s typically a little darker in colour that features a clever selection of malts. There aren’t any actual nuts in it, so it’s accessible to every- body. It will be made with cranberries and chocolate. It is going to be a great little beer; I’m really looking forward to that. The Rizzla Rice Lager is gluten friendly – or grouped as gluten-reduced – because we use an enzyme that breaks down gluten below 10 parts per-million. That’s suitable for a lot of people who are on a gluten-free diet, but I’m not a doctor so I always tell people to check with their doctor’s first. We are also starting up a single release program. We have done really well with single release beers in the past so we are going to try and do a new one every few months. We’re really going to concen- trate on a lot of small batch brewing in the next year. Those beers are going to be exclusively in the tap room. We will still continue to can a lot of products and we will keep a lot of stuff packaged so it will continue to be out there in the liquor stores. But if you really want the freshest beer of the batch we encourage you to come to the tap room to try them all – and order a burger or a pizza.” WHAT’S NEXT?
we do really, really well.”
THE BEER
“When we started, we bought 10 IPAs and went through them all ingredient by ingredient. We worked out what was similar and what was different. We scrutinized everything: ‘We are not allowed to have it this colour; let’s not do a crystal backbone; rather than having a piney residue profile, let’s go for more of a fruity, peppy upfront citrus bitterness.’ From the beginning, we really were just trying to make our- selves stand out a little bit by approaching things very dif- ferently. A lot of breweries say, ‘We brew the beer we want to drink,’ which has become cliché – but it’s something that we are really strict on. We sometimes come up with ideas that we think will sell really well, but if our heart is not in them, we won’t do it. We are tied to the idea of doing a honey lager just because they sell so fast, but at the end of the day I don’;t really like drinking honey lager – so I didn’t want to brew one. We’re trying not to adhere to the local trends and kind of do our own thing. We were fortunate enough to be one of the first breweries doing sours and fruity beers. We did really well with our Berliner Weisse the first time we went to Vancouver Craft Beer Week.” “Our four core beers are our Pils, our Chocolate Milk Stout, our India Pale Ale, and our new gluten friendly Rizzla Rice Lager. The three originals have all picked up awards at Van- couver Craft Beer Week, the B.C. Beer Awards, and the Canadian Beer Awards. Our pilsner got a silver medal for European-style lager in 2016 at the Canadian Beer Awards; in 2015 our IPA got a bronze for best IPA in B.C., and just last year in 2017, our Chocolate Milk Stout got best stout in B.C., so they’ve all become medal winners which is really nice. The Chocolate Milk Stout was the first recipe I wrote for Hearthstone. I had the idea rattling around in my head for quite a while. The beer is not overly chocolatey – it just has a really nice, almost a memory of a chocolatey taste. It’s more of an aroma than an actual full-on flavour. Stout is THE LAURELS
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FEBRUARY 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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