There are plenty of places in British Columbia where you can sit down with a locally brewed pint. There are fewer places where you can sit on a patio, look out across the farm surrounding you, and know that some of what ends up in your glass started right there. At Rusted Rake Brewing in Nanoose Bay, that connection between the land, the beer, and the food isn’t just part of the scenery, it’s quite literally the reason the brewery exists. And that makes Rusted Rake a pretty perfect place to understand what the BC Farm-Based Ale Trail is all about.
The Farm-Based Ale Trail follows the agricultural side of BC’s craft beverage story, connecting farm-based breweries and cideries with farmers’ markets, local food producers, agritourism experiences, and farm stays across the province. Rather than simply asking where the closest brewery is, it’s an invitation to follow where the ingredients come from, meet some of the people growing them, and experience a little more of the place behind the pint.
Here in the Parksville Qualicum Beach region, that story is especially easy to explore. Farms, markets, local producers, coastal communities, and craft beverages all overlap, making it possible to spend a day experiencing the region through what’s grown, brewed, and made here. At Rusted Rake, the idea of “farm to glass” gets pretty literal.
A Brewery That Started With the Farm
Interestingly, Rusted Rake wasn’t originally supposed to be a brewery.
The original vision was a farm-to-table eatery. Located on Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) land in Nanoose Bay, the team was growing food on the farm, adding value to it, and serving it through their restaurant. After running into municipal regulations around the amount of farm-grown food being used by the operation, however, they were told their existing model couldn’t continue.
There was another option: they could manufacture liquor using products grown on the farm and operate with a lounge endorsement. So, they switched their fields from Red Fife wheat to barley and started a brewery. It’s a slightly unconventional origin story, but one that feels especially fitting for a stop on the Farm-Based Ale Trail. Agriculture wasn’t something added to Rusted Rake’s identity once the brewery was established. The farm itself helped determine what the business would become.
For five years, Rusted Rake grew barley on the property for its beer production. This year, those fields are getting a bit of a break, with corn planted to help rejuvenate the soil. Even that change has created another local agricultural connection. The corn will go just up the road to Springford Farm in Nanoose Bay, where it will be used as cattle feed. In return, Springford Farm grew 10 acres of barley for Rusted Rake to use in its beer. It’s a great example of what farm-based brewing can look like beyond the boundaries of a single property. One farm doesn’t have to grow everything itself. Instead, neighbouring growers, producers, brewers, chefs, and businesses can work together, creating a local food and agricultural system that’s much more interconnected than what you see when the finished pint lands on the table.
And there’s plenty more than barley growing at Rusted Rake. The farm has roughly an acre of blueberries, which are used in the kitchen and also opened as a seasonal u-pick for the community. Herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins are grown on the property, along with a flower field that supplies fresh-cut flowers for the tables. Some of the land is also leased to a farmer through the Young Agrarians program, adding another layer to how the property supports local agriculture.
Of course, even a farm brewery can’t grow everything it needs. For Rusted Rake, sourcing locally wherever possible means extending that farm-to-table philosophy beyond its own fields and into the wider mid-Island community. Produce comes from local suppliers including Fierce Love Farms, while Forest for Dinner supplies foraged ingredients such as spruce tips. Those spruce tips make their way into the kitchen — including the Caesar salad — but also into one of the beers that perhaps tells the Rusted Rake story better than any other: the Wandering Scotsman Spruce Tip IPA. Made with Rusted Rake’s grain and spruce tips harvested on Vancouver Island, it’s the kind of beer that doesn’t just happen to be made here. Its ingredients actually connect it to the place you’re drinking it. The kitchen follows much the same philosophy. Seafood is sourced through Island-based companies Natural Gift Seafoods and Stirling Seafood, while dishes like brisket, burnt ends, and chowder showcase ingredients sourced from around British Columbia.
For Rusted Rake, these relationships aren’t simply a list of suppliers behind the scenes. They’re considered part of the story guests should understand. During the team’s summer kickoff orientation, the brewery invited 12 of its local suppliers to speak directly with staff. Ten attended, sharing more about their businesses and the products they provide.
It means that when someone at Rusted Rake tells you where something on your plate or in your glass came from, there’s a good chance they know a little bit about the people behind it, too.
Brewing With What’s Growing
One of the most interesting parts of eating and drinking closer to the source is that things don’t necessarily stay the same all year. The seasons change, what’s available changes, and the menu and beer can change along with them.
Rusted Rake tweaks its food menu twice a year to take advantage of ingredients available locally at different times. On the brewing side, that connection has become even more direct with the launch of its Farm to Tap beer series, which features ingredients grown right on the farm.
This summer, that resulted in two particularly farm-forward releases: a Carrot Ale and a Beet Saison. Yes, carrots and beets in beer! But that’s also part of the fun of visiting a brewery connected so closely to a working farm. When ingredients are growing just outside, there’s room to experiment with what a beer can taste like and what part of the farm might end up in the next glass. The possibilities change with the season, the harvest, and whatever happens to be growing particularly well that year. That connection continues even after the beer has been brewed and the food has been served.
All of Rusted Rake’s spent grain, kitchen waste, and farm waste is composted on site. No food scraps leave the farm. Grey water from the brewery and kitchen is also captured and directed toward the back of the property, where it can be used on the compost piles when needed. The farm produces ingredients. Those ingredients become food and beer. What’s left can return to the farm. It’s a relatively simple loop, but it’s also a great example of what a circular approach can look like when the farm, brewery, and kitchen aren’t treated as separate operations.For Rusted Rake, that idea of keeping things circulating locally goes beyond ingredients and compost. The team sees the brewery as part of the wider Nanoose Bay and mid-Island economy. When someone chooses to spend their money at Rusted Rake, the goal is for as much of that money as possible to continue moving through the community. When the brewery purchased its first brewing tanks, for example, the team chose a manufacturer in Courtenay. They could have found less expensive tanks internationally, but investing on Vancouver Island mattered more.
It’s a small decision in the grand scheme of operating a brewery, but those small decisions add up. Supporting nearby farms, food producers, manufacturers, and businesses helps create a stronger local economy, one where a pint of beer can have a much bigger footprint in the community than you might initially think.
Experiencing a Taste of Place
That’s also what makes the Farm-Based Ale Trail about more than simply finding somewhere to have a beer. Travel increasingly becomes memorable through the things you can experience rather than simply the places you can say you’ve visited. Food and drink have a pretty incredible way of connecting the two.
You can learn a lot about a region by wandering through its farmers’ markets, meeting growers and producers, eating what’s in season, and trying something made with ingredients grown nearby. The Parksville Qualicum Beach region lends itself particularly well to that kind of exploring, where a visit can move between farms, markets, local food, coastal experiences, and craft beer without travelling particularly far. Rusted Rake gives you a chance to slow that experience down. Guests aren’t visiting a brewery that happens to have a farm-inspired aesthetic. They’re visiting an actual working farm. Depending on the time of year, you can sit just metres away from crops connected to what’s being brewed, cooked, or served on the property. If you find a Rusted Rake beer you particularly love, enjoy it while you’re there. The brewery doesn’t distribute, so the only place to get its beer is right at the farm in Nanoose Bay.
It’s hard to get much more “taste of place” than that.
That idea is really at the heart of the larger Farm-Based Ale Trail. Rusted Rake is one stop, but every farm and producer along the Trail tells the story a little differently. Across British Columbia, breweries and cideries are growing grain, hops, fruit, and other ingredients; working with neighbouring farms; finding new uses for brewing byproducts; supporting local food producers; and creating experiences that bring visitors closer to where their food and drink actually come from. The point isn’t necessarily to race from one end of the Farm-Based Ale Trail to the other and check everything off a list. It’s an invitation to explore BC’s agricultural communities in a different way. Pick a region. Visit a farm. Wander a farmers’ market. Meet the people growing and producing there. Eat something that’s in season. Stay a little longer. Naturally, have a pint or two along the way.
For Rusted Rake, there are already ideas about how to make that connection even stronger. The team is looking toward more farm-based experiences in the future, with visions of farm events, on-site accommodations, a farm stand, flower experiences, and other ways to invite guests further into the property and the agricultural story behind it. It feels like a natural next chapter for a business that has never really separated the brewery from the farm in the first place. Rusted Rake’s story started with an unexpected pivot. That pivot led to barley. The barley led to beer. And somewhere along the way, a working farm in Nanoose Bay became a place where BC’s farm-to-glass story is particularly easy to see and taste.
So, the next time you’re exploring Parksville Qualicum Beach, leave a little room between the beaches, trails, and coastal stops for the farms, too. Follow the fields, stop at a market, meet a few of the people growing and producing here, and pull up a chair at Rusted Rake.
There’s a pretty good chance your pint has a story, some of it might be growing just outside the window.
Experience more: visit the Central Vancouver Island Ale Trail and the BC Farm-Based Ale Trail.
