The Story of Canada’s First Organic Farm-Based Brewery
Travelling through the interior of British Columbia’s central lake country, there is a place, just a kilometre or so off of Highway 1 near the community of Sorrento, that deserves a slight detour and some serious attention. From the coast, there are many routes to get there with varying amounts of time on the road from five hours and up. My visit in the spring was on the return from a conference in the Canadian Rockies. In September, it was travelling the opposite way, from Vancouver to Banff, for a ten-day camping trip. The contrast from spring to late summer could not have been more dramatic — and this was not just about a seasonal change.
Crannóg Ales is a craft brewery that gained notoriety as Canada’s first organic brewery. It has produced famous beers such as the creamy black Back Hand of God Stout and Insurrection Pale Ale. It is also an active farm, growing its own hops, complemented by a flock of sheep, that are kept safely in a crannóg (an elevated shelter) at nighttime. Their organic farm, which is known as Left Fields, has grown tiny amounts of Harrington malting barley and black wheat over the years — used just for organic bread-making fun. According to co-owner Rebecca Kneen, “In the last two years, the deer ate ALL THE BARLEY. Fortunately, there was only a little bit!”
A visit to the brewery in mid-September was in stark contrast to a previous visit in April. The September visit was interrupted by the repeated thud-thud-thud-thud of Chinook helicopters carrying helibuckets of water (up to 9842 litres) to fight a fire, still raging out of sight, over top of the mountain. This emergency had started three weeks earlier. The brewery was bustling with activity as it was the height of hop harvesting. Many local craft beer enthusiasts and neighbours were busy lending a helping hand at this critical time of the year. I was able to get Rebecca Kneen (the farmer) and Brian MacIsaac (the Brewer) away from the hustle for a short interview.
The Beginnings
The life path of these two passionate souls couldn’t have been more different in their youth. Rebecca was born in Toronto to parents who wanted to see how the food system is shaped from the bottom up. As people living in Toronto, they had seen it from the top down in food systems analysts and activism around food systems.
“We bought a place when I was little, sort of as part of the ‘back to the land’ thing,” Rebecca explained. “Only, with my family it was a little more of a political act.”
It was of great importance for Rebecca’s parents to get out of the city and back to the land. So they took their family to rural Nova Scotia and lived on a farm. This would be Rebecca’s start to a lifelong passion dedicated to organic farming.
Brian was born in East Vancouver, but at a young age headed to Belfast and spent his formative years in a very politically charged atmosphere. This had a profound effect on him and also brought a very unique edge to the beer and the philosophy of the brewery.
The East Van Connection
Back in the early 1990s, Rebecca and Brian were both hanging out on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver. Rebecca says that she noticed Brian before he noticed her, but Brian claims that is not true. They both agreed they were stalking each other. Eventually, they did meet face to face and started building their unbreakable bond together. They found their values were united. Brian was visiting Dan’s Home Brewing Supplies, picking up ingredients, adjusting recipes to his liking, and returning to get Dan Small’s opinion. At the same time, Storm Brewing had opened six blocks north on Commercial. James Walton welcomed Brian into the brewery and provided him with more feedback and knowledge on running a small commercial craft brewery.
“We wanted to farm as well, so urban wasn’t really in the cards,” Rebecca explained. “We found a strong organic community in the Shuswap, with lots of local mentors for the farm side of things. Land in the Shuswap was relatively affordable, and it’s a location with lots of access to all of southern BC. We miss our East Van community, but also a lot of that community was in the process of leaving for the country as well, so we were part of a diaspora.”
The Start of a Brewery
In an interesting coincidence, BC’s first organic craft brewery’s tanks were purchased from Canada’s original craft brewery, Horseshoe Bay Brewing, which opened in 1982. They are still used today in the brewery in the heart of the Shuswap.
Crannóg Ales officially opened in January 2000. The brewery sits in the middle of Left Fields organic farm, in the heart of unceded Secwepemc territory (Secwepemculew).
The name and artwork of the brewery come from Brian’s connection to his family “Gaels” — mostly Irish and some Scot. You will see his Celtic artwork throughout the brewery, surrounding structures, and on the labels.
“It was a long slog trying to get it going because of getting access to a lot of organic materials,” Brian explained. “They were just not being made, so we had to find them — left, right, and centre, from all over the world. The exception was that we started growing our hops, and they started to come ready in 2003.”
“He does very well for a townie!” Rebecca added with a smile.
In spirit, Crannóg’s beers are built on the guiding principles that are at the heart of their passion: environmental stewardship, social responsibility, integrity, and quality beer. Everything from the byproducts of the brewing process is used on the farm or recycled when necessary. Their core beers became instantly legendary and are sought out wherever they are found on tap.
For Brian and Rebecca, it is very important to provide a stable source of income for themselves, workers, and the brewery. They maintain a stable financial base and do not want to grow the brewery beyond the footprint of the farm. This stewardship has gained them not only respect in their local community but across the province.
A Close Call
This idyllic life changed dramatically on August 18th, 2023.
This area of the province, the Shuswap, has been in the middle of a prolonged drought: It has lasted about four years with no particular sign of ending any time soon. As a result, there have been a lot of forest fires in the region. This summer, two large, wildly out-of-control fires started up from lightning strikes across from Shuswap Lake on Adams Lake. That started at the beginning of August, and by August 18, the fire expanded exponentially and made a run across little Shuswap and Big Shuswap and came up Squilax Mountain behind the brewery. Embers were being thrown over onto the side of the mountain that Crannóg habitats! Then, the whole thing went up. On the night of August 18th, it became a critical emergency. It was also the night that Scotch Creek burned down with the loss of many people’s homes. In this one night of devastation, fear overwhelmed the community.
Without water or electricity, Rebecca and Brian decided to abandon the farm and brewery. They quickly concluded that the best thing they could do was to get out of the way, so nobody was trying to save them. The smoke was so dense they could hardly breathe.
As they watched, one part of the fire started and took off — in the space of about half an hour it went from one tree to about five acres of blaze. It was rapidly expanding at that point.
“We were trying to grab everything when we got evacuated — well when we evacuated ourselves,” Brian explained. “There were no lights.”
Rebecca added, “Some things were perfectly random. You evacuate weird things — you find out later, like our whole liquor cabinet. My main thought was: grab the gin, I’m going to need it tonight!”
With the help of a friend, they had some of their sheep moved to safety that night while they retreated to the nearby community of Salmon Arm. The next day they came back in the morning and loaded up the rest of the sheep, making sure they had everything locked down, and turned off the gas to the brewery.
“One of the things we did was load our apartment-size freezer on a truck — packing up all the meat we had been growing,” Brian said, and Rebecca added, “It was our food for the next year.”
They were off their property for a week, without knowing what was going on. Word got to them that they still had the farm and brewery, but it was so smoky you couldn’t tell where the fire was but only hear the sound of crackling and roaring of a raging forest fire.
They managed to grab a whole bunch of beer and load it into their van, including growlers. They had just set up for Roots and Blues, an annual music festival in Salmon Arm. Before the festival got fully underway, it was shut down. Fortunately, for them, their beer was stored by another local brewery.
“Yeah, the community was amazing!” Rebecca stated. “I just put out a message to the organizers of Root and Blues: Can you hang onto the beer? I don’t know what we can do with it right now. They got their sponsor to hold the refrigerator trucks for a few more days. Ricochet Brewing and Mt Begbie Brewing helped us load it and get it to a distributor. From there we were able to get it into storage and make sure it was all safe. It was one of those beautiful moments of the brewery community helping each other out — we appreciate it!”
Hop Harvest — Mid-September
Three weeks later, when I visited in the middle of September, there was still a lot of smoke. The fires would cool down at night and build back up in the afternoon. The good news was that the thunderstorm part of summer was mostly over and things would calm down.
Rebecca and Brian are very sensitive and in tune with the environment surrounding them. Rebecca commented, “In recent years we have seen many changes in the weather patterns with less rain and summer temperatures remaining higher than normal for extended periods. This not only affects the forest but also the animals that habitat them for food and shelter. In the end, we feel nature will come up with a solution.”
When it comes to the farm and the production of hops, I asked Brian what effect smoke has on the hops, as they are an integral part of the flavour and bitterness of beer.
“It stops them from growing as much because they can’t breathe,” he answered. “It’s not like wine grapes, where it goes into the sugars, and then you can’t ferment those sugars anymore — they absorb the flavours. Hops are different.”
“I’ve got to say we were incredibly lucky,” Rebecca added. “All the beer we had in storage stayed just fine over the time we were without power, which was only about four days. We did lose some that were in active fermentation, and whatever we had packaged was gone, but that was a fairly small amount compared to what we had in bulk tanks and even in the kegs. We have come through this remarkably well. A lot of that has to do with the hard work of a lot of other people.”
When it was safe to return to their farm, they had the opportunity to personally thank the firefighters who had bravely protected their farm and brewery.
With the hustle and bustle of harvest around them, and bags of fresh hops building up, Rebecca suggested that I accompany her to the hop processing room in one of the adjacent buildings. Climbing the stairs to the second floor gave a wonderful overview of the brewery and farm. Arriving inside, Rebecca took one of the hop sacks and laid its fragrant contents out on a drying tray. She invited me to do a face plant into the thick layer of hops — it was absolutely heavenly. Such a memorable moment this beer geek will never forget!
Rebecca then pulled out trays of dried hopes and packed them into sacks using a baler. This “powered by might” manual press could certainly replace going to the gym during harvest time.
Focusing on 2024
At the end of December, I gave a call to the brewery. A cheerful, happy voice greeted me on the other end of the line. Rebecca told me that everything is back in order, and the brewery is looking forward to a productive and exciting 2024 with their new brewer Kevin Symington.
Rebecca concludes, “I think our main news is just that we made it! Through a very very challenging year, we’ve come out whole, and we’re looking forward to deepening our sustainability with local partnerships.”
If you find yourself on a road trip through the Shuswap, be sure to drop in for a growler fill. It might be a good idea to pack one of your growlers from home with you… recycling bottles will put a big smile on Brian’s face.
