This December marks 25 years since the Lethbridge Brewery closed, ending over 90 years of the brewing industry in the city.
Owned by Molson at the time, the plant was a victim of consolidation amongst the brewing industry in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, closed as a condition of the merger between Molson and competitor Carling O’Keefe.
However, two companies with entirely different philosophies are hoping to once again make Lethbridge the place for beer in Southern Alberta.
In an old tire shop on 2 Ave. South, on the edge of downtown, resides Theoretically Brewing Company.
Founded by Kris Fischer and Kelti Boissonneault and named for their love of science, Theoretically is hoping to become part of the larger craft beer movement, producing smaller batches of beer at higher quality.
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Fischer, a chemist by trade with a masters from the University of Lethbridge, began home brewing over 15 years ago.
He is in charge of developing the beers the company will brew, including the first three slated for production.
“The first beer we’re producing is the one that got things started, Black Hole Beer,” he said. “Our flagship beer is going to be an amber ale we’re calling Curiosity and we’ll also be brewing a beer called Quantum Wheat Ale.”
On the business end of the company, Boissonneault is proud of the way the company is keeping things local.
“We’re going to keep it local, keep it in Alberta and then we’ll slowly expand from there,” she said. “But we are looking to hit the Calgary market in the first year.”
Most of the equipment was built locally by Charlton and Hill and the waste mash will be used as animal feed for local producers.
At a construction site on the east edge of town, Scott Crighton and his partners with Coulee Brew Company are taking a different approach.
A business plan three years in the making, the project grew from simply being a microbrewery into a brew pub in the heart of the city’s new hotel district on 43 St. South.
“The Alberta market is seriously under developed, so we went big,” he said. “The whole beer industry was shrinking in Canada, but the craft beer industry was growing by around 11 to 12 per cent.”
The project has attracted investors from across the city from restaurant owners to Safeway employees which has made it a point of local pride to some, however it hasn’t been without its hitches.
A trademark dispute with another brewery in Alberta lead to the company dropping the name WildCraft Brewery, even after the first production run had already hit shelves across Alberta under the old name.
As for future plans, Crighton and his partners are hoping to begin producing soft drinks and distilling vodka and whisky once the company establishes itself.
Both breweries hope to be in operation by the end of the year and will be selling directly from their respective sites.
Kelti Boissonneault of Theoretically Brewing works on a gravity fermenter, a device that allows mash to ferment into beer.
Brew Master Kris Fischer of Theoretically Bewing moves part of the equipment that turns malt and water into mash, fermentable sugars that eventually become beer.
Scott Crighton inspects a boiler at the stie of the Coulee Brew Company brewery. The boiler is designed to heat the water in the fermenters, speeding up the brewing process.
