I am wondering why there are so few breweries in Alberta? Is it a population issue? A licensing issue? Lack of interest in good beer?

I welcome any and all insights to this question as I have wondered this for quite some time now.

Cheers

Totally the type of reply I was looking for! I have read the license requirements and noticed that it states a 5,000 hectoliter "Production Capacity", which doesnt really say that you need to sell that much, you just need to be able to produce that much if you had to? In my head this feels wrong, so im sure it is!

Maybe we need to start a campaign and write our MP's! Speaking of that, I had a one on one brewery tour in England and the brewmaster of that place recommended that I start writing letters to encourage change. Maybe the problem is that they don't feel that its currently an issue that needs to be addressed? I seriously doubt Allison Redford would give 2 shits about changing this law, she would be more likely to put a 10,000 HL minimum on it!

I think you can get around the brewery minimum, by staying under the 'Brew Pub' maximum

http://www.aglc.ca/pdf/handbooks/liquor_licensee_handbook.pdf

In section 3.12 (around page 65) They put on a maximum yearly production (10,000 hectolitre), and the minimums are around your tanks (5 hectolitre) and weekly storage (10 hectolitre).

Seems to me that you can meet the requirements by purchasing two of: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/500-liters-132-gallons-variable-capacity-tank-with-accessories-2.html

Of course, you still need to jump through all the hoops of filling out a brewing report with each batch, and you have to also get a class-A license, but I think the barrier to entry is lower than that for a Brewery, but you'll also have to have a pub. Further, if you have a valid E license, you can apply for a D licence (offsales), and sell your delicious brew for people to take home.

Even though the Brew Pub licensing is less ornerous than the Brewery license, I have to agree with the first reply: The problem is government regulation creates too high of a barrier to entry.

The idea of opening a brewpub to get around the licensing capacity minimums brings about other issues though; notably that a potential business owner is now not only in the brewing business but also in the restaurant business which may not be palatable. Further there are some other limitations that come into play, like not being able to make that beer available in liquor stores or other pubs without extra added headaches (if at all, the wording is kinda vague from my once over of it), and not being able to make beers over 8.5% without approval from the AGLC. Actually, I sent an e-mail to the AGLC awhile back asking about the logic of the production capacity minimums, making note that they make nanobreweries illegal and craftbreweries difficult to start up. Sadly I forgot to save the reply as I would have loved to copy-paste it here, but the response I got cited things like "maintaining fair industry competitiveness", and "social responsibility". Yes, I scratched my head reading those two items until it hurt too.

Beyond the licensing being prohibitive, the province in general is vastly behind in terms of plain ol' beer education. Things are getting better, and the emergence of so many beercentric pubs in downtown Calgary gives me hope, but the process is still a long and ardous one. I might just be overly optimistic here but I hope that within 5-10 years Alberta will be catching up to BC and Quebec pending everyone sticks to their guns and continue to work towards educating the masses.

Regarding the above article, I'd like to point out that in some cases (I'm specifically thinking Yellowhead's here) it isn't just a matter of the market and the licensing but also a matter of a not so solid business plan that holds small brewers back. With all due respect to Yellowhead I'm not so sure trying to build a brewery on nothing but a mediocre lager is a sound idea regardless of where you intend to do it. Lacking the marketing power and cost efficiency of the macros while also missing out on the quality and creativity more generally associated with the craftbrewing community strikes me as leaving yourself with a limited target demographic. Now this is all little more than my own personal armchair musings, but there were a couple of breweries in this province who did the same damn thing in the past and they passed away rather unceremoniously.

Part of the issue in Alberta is that they, the provincial government, don’t want to deal with the problem of small breweries in the first place. We don’t have a regulatory body big enough to babysit nano breweries. They set up the rules for opening a brewery so that they didn’t have the issues they do in BC. Out there, any whacko home brewer can open up a pub for a few grand and with a couple of shitty beer recipes.

The other part of it is the big breweries don’t want you to be able to open a nano or craft brewery in Alberta. In 2009, The Liquor Control Board of Ontario sold 16.9 million in craft beer, a 46.5% rise from the year before. British Columbia sales jumped 33.4%. The big boys know what’s coming, and they’ll do whatever they can to influence the AGLC and other licensing bodies to restrict the advance of the Craft Brewing movement.