Kaslo’s little brewery is home to a hidden legend of BC brewing and an inspiration to women in craft brewing everywhere.
Shirley Warne may be a self-declared bitch, but she is warm, welcoming, and clearly loved by the staff at her brewery. I’ve just driven nine hours from Vancouver to reach the tiny village of Kaslo, tucked away on the shores of Kootenay Lake and just an hour’s drive from Nelson. On Kaslo’s main drag, populated by Gold Rush-style shops and shadowed by snow-topped mountains, sits Angry Hen Brewing, opened by Shirley in December 2017. On this quiet Saturday night, as I’m relaxing after the long drive, Shirley joins me in the brewery for a pint and a chat. She puts our beers — a Fowl Play Hazy IPA for me and Straw Man Lager for her — on her tab and tosses some coins in the tip jar for the staff. The woman running the tasting room gives her a quick hug before they close up for the night.
These small details reveal that Shirley has cultivated a positive relationship with her employees. After decades of working in the beer industry and dealing with difficult bosses, she knows the value of a safe and warm working environment. From homebrewer and bottom-of-the-ladder brewery grunt to brewery owner and brewmaster in the village she loves, Shirley has seen it all — and she’s put all that knowledge to use. As one of BC’s first female craft brewers, she fearlessly trailblazed in a male-dominated industry. Even though she’s never been interested in public attention and therefore rarely makes it into beer publications (Lundy Dale’s interview with her for What’s Brewing is a notable exception), she’s had a deep influence on craft brewing here in BC.
Climbing the Brewing Ladder in Ontario
Shirley’s career began not in BC, but at Conner’s Brewing in Mississauga, Ontario. After years of homebrewing with her twin sister Pat and beer tasting across Europe, she decided to pursue brewing full-time. A friend introduced her to Paul Hoyne — eventual co-founder of Lighthouse Brewing in Victoria — who got her in the door at Conner’s, a production brewery that opened in 1985 but closed by 1990. She didn’t stay long; there was little room for creativity, but, unfortunately, plenty of room for sexism. Paul and the other brewers were wonderful mentors, but the company’s owners were crude and misogynistic to the young female brewer-in-training. She quit within a year, but shortly afterwards met Amsterdam Brewing’s Joel Manning. She made sure she tried his beer before she took a job with him (it passed the test).
“Joel was such a great guy,” Shirley recalls. Manning ended up being a valued fellow brewing colleague for several years. While brewing at Amsterdam, and its sister brewery, Rotterdam, she trained Tony Dewald and Harley Smith, brewers who would make their mark in BC brewing. “When Harley first started, he made some kind of off-colour joke and I jumped right on him,” Shirley laughs. “But we ended up being best friends.”
Bootlegging and Brewpubs in Vancouver
By the early ‘90s, Shirley decided to leave the brewing scene in Toronto to join her sister Pat in Vancouver. Just as they had during university, Shirley and Pat took up homebrewing in their apartment again. “We would bootleg beer from that apartment! We had these big parties,” she recalls. “I don’t think I can get in trouble for it now though.” Their homebrew was so popular that tipsy neighbours would come knocking late at night, looking for whatever they were selling. “That was when I first brewed the Old Bitch,” Shirley says, referring to the Old Bitch Bitter she later brewed for Brassneck and Angry Hen. “It was one of our most popular beers back then.”
Finding brewing opportunities in Vancouver proved to be a challenge. “BC and Ontario were stagnant for a while,” Shirley says, referring to the 1990s beer scene. When Yaletown Brewpub opened in 1994, she applied for the job of head brewer but lost out to Iain Hill, now co-owner of Strange Fellows Brewing. However, she was soon contacted by Eli Gershkovich, a lawyer who was opening a new brewpub in Gastown. He’d visited Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies on Hastings — a haven for all Vancouver homebrewers — and asked for brewer recommendations. Dan gave him Shirley’s name. When she showed up for her interview, she brought some of her homebrew: a bitter, a brown, and a lager. They hired her that same day, and Shirley Warne became the first brewer at the new Steamworks Brewpub.
At Steamworks, Shirley had free rein over the brewing programme as well as the freedom to shut down unwelcome suggestions or interference (she didn’t fear losing her job — Eli wanted to keep her on). In her first week, she met Conrad Gmoser, a young man who was working as an assistant to the architect and moonlighting as a carpenter but swiftly developed an interest in brewing. Vern Lambourne, now of Parkside, and her old friend Harley Smith also both worked under her at Steamworks. When she left Vancouver in the late ‘90s for opportunities in the Maritimes, she trained up Conrad to take her place as brewmaster. And when she returned to Vancouver in the early 2000s, she took up homebrewing again — this time in Conrad’s garage.
Back in Vancouver after a few years away, Shirley was itching to open her own brewery. After purchasing brewing equipment, she spent several years trying to find investors. Leads that were initially promising gradually dried up. By 2007 she was fully disheartened; she gave up her dream and sold the equipment. For close to a decade, she helped new breweries start up and did occasional brewing jobs. The Ridge Brewpub in Osoyoos, for example, would fly her out for brew days (they gave her no creative license in the brewhouse though). Shirley helped Conrad and his friend Nigel Springthorpe open Brassneck Brewing in 2012, and her Old Bitch Bitter was one of the first beers they put on tap (unlike Eli at Steamworks, they were fine with the “offensive” name). She was also behind the scenes at Bomber Brewing in Vancouver and Crannóg Ales in Sorrento.
Finding Her Passion: Angry Hen Brewing
But Shirley still wanted her own brewery. Gradually, after multiple visits and a lot of planning, she and a small group of friends purchased a storefront property in Kaslo for $165,000. The village was the home of her sister-in-law, and it was also a place that resonated with her: the close-knit community, the picturesque high street, the nearby mountains and lake.
In December 2017, with fellow Brassneck brewer Jeff Leake along for the ride, Conrad made the snowy drive out to Kaslo to help Shirley set up and get through her first few brews. After they left, she had to do her first solo brew before opening day. She was on her own — sleep-deprived and “going a bit crazy,” in her words. Things started going wrong. She was about to chill the beer into the fermenter then realized she hadn’t sanitized the tank. Everything needed to stop. The hops were left in the kettle far longer than planned while she got the fermenter clean, resulting in a beer that was more bitter than expected. She called it “Freak Out” as a homage to her state of mind at the time. “But there are people who still ask for it!” she says, smiling.
On December 17, 2017, opening day, Shirley and her staff were so pressed for time that brown paper was still on the taproom windows in the mid-afternoon. Jolayne and Brenda, a couple from the nearby village of Balfour, had planned a visit to the new brewery after their afternoon hike and were disappointed to find the windows papered and the doors locked.
Jolayne called the brewery from its own front steps: “Hey, are you guys open today?” “Yes….” “Well… when?” When Shirley realized the two women were standing right outside, she decided to open up a bit ahead of time — why not?
After the window paper came down and the doors were unlocked, Jolayne and Brenda eagerly entered to try Angry Hen’s first lineup of beers: a Christmas Ale, the East Meets West IPA, a Pale Ale, a Helles, a Kolsch, and (of course) the Freak Out. It was a memorable evening, and the couple remain good friends with Shirley and her wife Fran to this day.
The Ethos of Angry Hen and Reflections on a Life in Brewing
Angry Hen is a brewery borne of skill, diligence, passion, and personality. The name itself was generated years before, in the mid-2000s when Shirley was homebrewing in Conrad’s garage and wanted to make her own homebrew brand. A friend’s suggestion of “Old Hen or something” (in Shirley’s recollection) was close but not exactly what she wanted. She found herself inspired by Feathers McGraw, the goofy-looking yet villainous penguin in the Wallace & Gromit cartoons. She loved the way he was both silly and aggressive — so she turned Old Hen into Angry Hen. “After all, I get angry!” she laughs. Shirley asked a friend who lived in her building, graphic designer Terry Sunderland, to sketch a cute yet mean chicken for her logo. This devil-eyed hen is now the face of Shirley’s brewery; with its chubby body and comically stick-thin legs, it holds a cleaver and stares menacingly to the side.
As the logo — and my conversations with her — might suggest, Shirley doesn’t feel the need to placate jerks or ignore bad behaviour just because she’s a woman. Fortunately, the jerks have been limited. While some owners have been dismissive or derogatory because of her gender, her fellow brewers have always respected her.
“Those guys never treated me like I was less than or second class,” she says.
Her willingness throughout her career to help other brewers, accept help in return, and maintain confidence in her own decisions, has solidified her reputation in the industry.
When she needs to defend her choices, however, she has no problem doing so. Shirley recalls one customer entering Angry Hen feeling, well, angry. “I’m really offended by that name! It’s very sexist!” the woman said to Shirley, pointing to the Old Bitch Bitter on the tap list. Shirley’s response was frank: “Well, I’m the brewer. It’s my beer — and I’m an old bitch! I’ll call my beer what I want.” It may be a bit shocking, perhaps offensive, but I personally find the beer’s name — and her attitude — refreshing. She’s transformed a traditionally derogatory term into an empowering one. Sometimes we’re angry. Sometimes we’re bitchy. Shirley gives herself (and other women) permission to acknowledge that.
Angry Hen has brought new life to Kaslo over the past six years. It draws tourists into the village, of course, but it’s also a hub for the locals. “Kaslo’s living room” is its affectionate nickname. In having her own brewery, Shirley now has full creative freedom in what she makes and how she markets it — something that she longed for decades ago in Vancouver. It’s not just the creativity of brewing she loves, though; it’s also the physicality.
“I like moving around. I can’t sit still,” she says. “I like everything analog when it comes to brewing — I don’t want to brew with buttons.”
Moving and touching and feeling are the things she loves about making beer. Most breweries’ mash tuns have a mechanized stirring arm, but Shirley still stirs the mash herself with a large paddle. “I can feel the thickness of it, the viscosity,” she says when I ask her why she mashes by hand. “I can tell if there’s any balling. I can control the flow of the grist. I know what’s happening with it at every stage.”
This “hands-on” instinct seems to characterize much about Shirley. She is deeply involved in all aspects of her brewery, from front-of-house to brewhouse. She cares about it — and about the people. She extended her care and generosity to me, inviting me to share a meal at her home where she cooked up some amazing burgers, introduced me to her sister, her pets, and her friends, and even tried my homebrew (my skills are woefully inadequate compared to hers, but she was gracious in her feedback).
If you want some good beer, you’ll certainly find it at Angry Hen — but you’ll also find a deep sense of community and connection. Kaslo’s little brewery truly is home to a hidden legend of BC craft brewing and an inspiration to women in craft brewing everywhere. Are you ready for your next road trip?
Along with many breweries in BC, Angry Hen is faced with imminent repayment deadlines of the federal CEBA loan that kept them afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to assist this small BC business, a GoFundMe fundraiser has been set up by a friend of the brewery.
