Fancy_Pants
Active Member
I'm posting this thread here partly because I'm miffed, partly because I am crest fallen, and partly because I'm interested to hear about other weird stuff like this. The last year or so I got really into the idea of starting a brewery as I felt it would be much more rewarding then my current profession as a blue collar tradesman. The excitement behind the idea has been bolstered by a shift in the attitudes of beer drinkers in my city of Calgary (3rd largest city in Canada) drifting towards higher quality beer, an article in a local paper about the demand for more craft beer in the city, and the lack of microbrew presence in the province.
I started kicking up production of my home brews and working on recipes and researching start up costs and equipment, reading articles and forum topics here on the topic of starting and growing breweries. Until I got to an article published only a little earlier this year, giving reason for the lack of micro breweries.
There is a law in Alberta that to get a class E brewing license (the lowest one available) a brewery must be able to produce 250,000L of beer per year within the first 18 months of start up.
To put this into perspective, there are successful micro breweries in the province of Ontario that have been running for 10 years and still haven't hit that volume. What's more, Alberta is the only province in the country with a minimum volume requirement. There's no such thing as getting your feet wet with a nano brewing operation, establishing a brewery in the province I have been raised in most of my life requires an enormous financial investment or winning the lottery. My dream becomes much more plausible if I move. Seems a better option every year.
Opinions?
I started kicking up production of my home brews and working on recipes and researching start up costs and equipment, reading articles and forum topics here on the topic of starting and growing breweries. Until I got to an article published only a little earlier this year, giving reason for the lack of micro breweries.
There is a law in Alberta that to get a class E brewing license (the lowest one available) a brewery must be able to produce 250,000L of beer per year within the first 18 months of start up.
To put this into perspective, there are successful micro breweries in the province of Ontario that have been running for 10 years and still haven't hit that volume. What's more, Alberta is the only province in the country with a minimum volume requirement. There's no such thing as getting your feet wet with a nano brewing operation, establishing a brewery in the province I have been raised in most of my life requires an enormous financial investment or winning the lottery. My dream becomes much more plausible if I move. Seems a better option every year.
Opinions?