To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first craft ale at Horseshoe Bay’s The Troller pub, John Ohler has teamed up with Russell Brewing to launch the John Mitchell Signature Cascadian Dark Ale.
In 1981, when three national brewing companies had a stranglehold on beer parlour taps and publicans were restricted to pouring whatever fizzy lager they were assigned by officials, Vancouver Province reporter Tony Wanless was invited out to Horseshoe Bay by a displaced Englishman who wanted to show British Columbians what the real stuff tasted like.
John Mitchell, owner of The Troller in Horseshoe Bay, had been left without any beer to sell following a strike at Carling O’Keefe. He’d had enough. Not only did he want to make his own small-batch, wood-keg beer, he wanted to sell it.
“Dream nectar,” wrote Wanless, after tasting a glass. “Old-fashioned, rich and flavourful, dark, heavy.”
Mitchell, who died in 2019, said at the time, “We want to do what some people in are doing in England, make beer in wooden kegs the old way, not the brewery way.”
If all went well, predicted Wanless, pub patrons “may find their utopia.”
It was an unlikely project at a time when arcane rules that still held a whiff of Prohibition-era governance restricted beer parlours in B.C. But Mitchell had an ace up his sleeve: Expo 86 was coming. He argued with officials that culturally, the province and the country would be ridiculed if they couldn’t serve proper beer to international visitors.
According to BeerMeBC: “During a meeting in 1981, B.C.’s Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs Peter Hyndman told the CEOs of Canada’s big three breweries that he was going to approve John’s plan for a “cottage brewery.” The brewing executives replied that Mitchell was a fool, and he would never “make a go of it.”
So Mitchell was granted the first craft brewery licence in Canada, with the caveat that the production had to be offsite. As it turned out, Mitchell’s plan was more than a good idea.
“It was a huge event, and it started a revolution,” said John Ohler, director of the John Mitchell Legacy scholarship at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
In 1984, after pushing officials even harder, Mitchell coined the term “brewpub” and convinced officials to allow brewing and quaffing beer to happen on the same site. He co-founded Spinnakers in Victoria, the first brewpub in the country.
“He fought tirelessly for changes to regulations, he fought for legislation, and he laid the foundation for the industry we have today,” said Ohler. “Before he died, he was shocked to learn there were over 1,000 brewpubs in Canada, largely because of the work he did.”
It wasn’t legislation that was his only legacy, said Ohler, who grew up in Horseshoe Bay and recalls peering through the window of that first brewing building, watching Mitchell work on his craft. It was quality, and craft.
Mitchell knew that the wood keg process couldn’t be done in large breweries — he dreamed of 100-per-cent barley mash, he believed in using whole cone hops, not hop pellets, said Ohler.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the July 6 launch of that first craft ale at The Troller pub, Ohler has teamed up with Russell Brewing to launch the John Mitchell Signature Cascadian Dark Ale.
Ohler provided Mitchell’s original brewsheets to the team at Russell Brewing. “They used them as a guide to create their own unique beer to honour John Mitchell.”
Canada Malting company donated the malts, and Yakima Chief Hops donated the hops, Central City brewing in Surrey donated the special yeast, the Great Little Box company donated the labels, and collectible coasters were created by the Coaster Factory.
All proceeds from sales will go to the John Mitchell Legacy scholarship for students in the brewing program at Kwantlen — a program dear to Mitchell’s heart.
“John would say this is exactly why he started a brewery. To bring people together is the true essence of craft beer. He would be astounded,” said Ohler.
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Source: vancouversun.com
