| They can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound. They can’t do whatever a spider can. And, while I'm sure they lose their tempers once in a while, none of them turn green or rip their clothes by flexing their muscles. Still, the people behind Calgary's beer share common characteristics with our childhood comic-book heroes.
Wildwood Grill and Brewing Company's Jim Anderson is the city’s Batman of beer. He usually toils alone in his underground lair, cleaning kegs and fermenters, or in his hidden laboratory, studying yeast cultures. He only rarely appears above-ground, brewing one of Wildwood's seven beers in his street-front mash tun and kettle, fighting the crime of bad beer.
Brad LeDrew, chief beer officer of Brew Brothers Brewing Company, is Spider-Man. By day, a hard-working engineering consultant, by night, LeDrew slings his beer, brewed in Brew Brothers' showcase brewery on 11th Avenue S.W., all over the city.
Wild Rose Brewery's Mike Tymchuk is Lex Luthor. That's not to say he's evil. Actually, Tymchuk is a very nice man. But having helped open 20 breweries, not only in North America, but also in such far-flung places as Japan, China and the Philippines, world domination is obviously on his mind.
Wildwood's Anderson is a born-again craft brewer. Other than a brief stint as a cabbie, he has spent his entire life in the brew biz. He started in Winnipeg 33 years ago with Carling, which would later merge with Molson. In 1996, he moved to Cincinnati to brew with Samuel Adams. And so began his love affair with craft brewing.
Two years later, an opportunity to move back to Canada arose and he jumped at it. "Wildwood is a dream," says Anderson. "Great owners. Great customers. I have free rein over the brewery." At Wildwood, Anderson is an artist. Molson and Samuel Adams are monster brewers whose process is largely about turning dials and pulling levers. But Wildwood's brewing system, less than one-tenth the size of Molson's, is 100-per-cent manual. This permits Anderson to handcraft the kind of beer he likes – flavourful, rich and full of hops.
While Anderson has moved to progressively smaller breweries, LeDrew has always wanted to get bigger. When he began home-brewing 20 years ago, he brewed 10-gallon batches, twice the size of a standard homebrew. He then had an 18-gallon homebrew system custom built and used it to win many awards.
In 1994, he and some home-brewing friends made the leap to commercial brewing. He developed recipes, but contracted the actual brewing to breweries with excess capacity. At the time, it was win-win. His beer was made without the gigantic capital expenditure associated with a brewery. Breweries that were surviving by the skin of their teeth received much-needed additional revenue.
But for LeDrew, who is a brewer at heart, not being able to brew for himself was always troubling. So, in 2003 he rounded up some investors and plopped down $500,000 for a custom-built, state-of-the-art brewery.
"Being able to create our own beer in our own brewery is the ultimate in satisfaction and fun," says LeDrew. Seven of his beers now flow through Brew Brothers' taps and, after a long hiatus, will soon return to liquor stores.
Unlike Anderson and LeDrew, Tymchuk wasn't born with beer pumping through his veins. He is a journeyman chef. His knowledge of the human palate and an ability to paint a flavour picture upon it qualifies him for the job of brewer. Tymchuk has no formal training in brewing, but that hasn't stopped him from succeeding in a cutthroat business. "I've been too busy opening breweries to learn how to make beer," he explains.
For Tymchuk, beer is a creative outlet. That's why Wild Rose is known for making unique beers. Wild Rose's lineup consists of a raspberry-flavoured wheat ale, an unfiltered hefeweizen, a truly hoppy India pale ale and a "100-per-cent honey-free" brown ale.
While the three brewers may have different pasts, they are unified in their passion for beer. Despite constant pressures to "dumb down" their beers to make them more palatable to the masses, they are steadfast in their devotion to purity. For all of them, the best thing about the business is the beer itself.
It is certainly not the financial rewards. In Tymchuk’s words, "Making (beer) is not hard. Selling it is the hard part. The better the beer, the harder it is to sell." Anderson would agree. His Signature Red (formerly known as Buggaboo Bitter) is the type of hoppy, bitter beer he loves. And yet it is one of his slowest sellers.
Like the comic-book characters we grew up with, Anderson, LeDrew and Tymchuk fight an unending fight and deserve a real hand. But wait, save your applause – buy a locally brewed beer, instead. |
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