Your intrepid liquor reporter attended the annual Beerfest bacchanalia in Calgary last weekend, which always seems to turn into a mashup of Animal House and Caligula by the end of the evening, with this year being no exception.
The one thing that jumped out at me (aside from the giggling sorority girls) was the number of new craft distilleries in Alberta.
Sure, Calgary has long been home to Alberta Distilleries (now owned by Japan-based Suntory), and High River has hosted Highwood Distillers for decades, but they are the big-business industrial distillers that crank out millions of litres per year.
However, the small artisanal distillers have quietly been appearing, thanks mainly to reduced red tape from the provincial government, which previously required distillers to have capacity to produce a minumum of 5000 litres per year in order to qualify for a business license.
Fortunately, the minimum production levels were scrapped back in 2013, which ushered in a new era of small craft distillers across our fair province. Perhaps cocktail culture will have a revival based solely on local hooch!
Alberta is finally beginning to catch up to our distillery-loving neighbours in BC, which boasts more than 50 distilleries, and a few dozen more expected to open later this year.
One of the first of the craft distillers to appear in Alberta was Last Best Brewing & Distilling, the fourth location of Bear Hill Brewing. You may be familiar with their other brew pubs in Jasper, Banff, and Fort McMurray, but the Calgary location is the first to perform both brewing of beer and distilling of spirits.
The Eau Claire Distillery, located in scenic Turner Valley has consistently punched above their weight since opening their doors back in 2014, winning awards the world over, and best known for their artisan-styled Parlour Gin.
If you get the chance, make the trip to Turner Valley just for the distillery tour, located in the same downtown historical building that once housed a movie theatre and dance hall, but is now home to the best Gin this side of the Rockies!
For those making a trip to Banff, check out the Park Distillery, right on the main drag in downtown Banff. With a regular vodka made from the purest of glacial waters from the mountains, 3 flavoured vodkas, and a rye whisky available in their retail liquor shop, you can take a bottle home, or enjoy it with a meal in the attached restaurant and bar.
Even tiny Vegreville has gotten in on the action, with Red Cup Distilling making moonshine-inspired hooch that is affectionately labeled as Wheat Shine, and produced in the same type of homemade still that the illicit moonshiners of yore would crank out their batches, much to the dismay of Sheriff Rosco P. Coletrane.
If you like your whisky raw and untouched by oak aging, Wheat Shine is the hooch for you. You’ll have to look hard for it, as every batch produced so far has quickly sold out.
Slightly further north, Big Rig Craft Distillery is located in Nisku, just a few kilometers from the Edmonton Airport. With an array of spirits, including unflavoured and flavoured vodkas, moonshine-styled unaged whisky, gin, cream liquor, and even a rum-like hooch made from sugar beets instead of sugar cane.
While I’m always up for a classy Gin & Tonic, it was the Sugar Beet Brum that was my favourite. Just to keep the revenuers happy, it cannot be legally called rum unless it is made from sugar cane, so the hooch is called Brum instead.
Tasting like a traditional rum, and perfect for cocktails, Big Rig seems to be the only Canadian distillery producing a rum-like hooch from locally grown sugar beets, and the bottles are flying off the shelves.
The unique bottles are shaped like the iconic oil rig that first struck oil in Leduc back in the 1940s, and birthed Alberta’s oil industry, making a sip of this hooch a sip of history.
So, the next time you think about reaching for a boring old Smirnoff Vodka or Tanqueray Gin, think of the hardworking Alberta distillers using local ingredients and small-batch processes to bring you an artisanal product instead of an industrially produced hooch like the megadistilleries.
Just ask at your friendly neighbourhood booze merchant for some local spirits!
