BC’s First Gluten-Free Brewery Ends in Heartbreak

Earlier this year at CAMRA Vancouver’s CiderWISE festival I met CAMRA BC members Dennis & Peggy Maynes who told me of their plans to open BC’s first Gluten-Free Brewery. For years Dennis had been home brewing a range of beers made from sorgum, rice and lots of other GF fermentables. Let me assure you, as a homebrewer and former brewer, making good beer without malted barley is really difficult, even the most seasoned brewer struggles to make something worth trying.
The project sounded wonderful, I told them that CAMRA would support them and hopefully we would be able to feature their products at the next CiderWISE festival. All went quiet for a few months and then in August an article in the Province highlighted the problems they have had trying to get classification as a brewery. Simply put, because they won’t have any malt in the brewery they can’t be considered a brewery therefore their products must be considered “coolers” which is taxed much more heavily. Coolers usually consist of grain alcohol blended with sugar, water and flavourings, it’s cheap and quick to make, hence the higher tax bracket. However the Maynes were planning on making small batch artisanal beers which would cost a lot more than most beers to make. We hoped that the LDB would see sense and they would be able to find some way around these ludicrous rules. They haven’t.

Yesterday I was contacted by Dennis who thanked CAMRA for our support but he then revealed that they were giving up, the LDB had broken them. In an email to me he said:

We have given up trying to reason with LDB. We cannot run a viable business facing a 74% Markup (keg) and a 98% Markup (packaged) on our Ginger Beer. Since my forte as a brewer is non-malt fermentations we made the decision to sell our operation in Delta (not far from Four Winds).

There is a whole world out there for Craft non-malt, non-hop. Why should brewers be prevented from creativity. There are also a lot of products with history such as Chicha, Kvass and ethnic Rice fermentations. Some of it tastes really, really good!

Consequently Dennis and Peggy are putting their Brewery up for sale before it has even brewed a drop.

I think our brewery would be perfect for a startup. Although it would require additional equipment for all-grain brewing, the basics are there. As you know the real value in what we are offering is ALL licenses in place… no 1 year wait for LCLB approval. We have corporate structure, health and environmental, city approval etc. No need to spend a year chasing paperwork. Walk in and brew.

That certainly is a great opportunity for someone but it really has come at a cost to these innovators with a dream.

The LDB refused to comment on this when the province contacted them in the summer and they remain characteristically tight-lipped. We hear so much talk about these ludicrous rules being updated and fixed but it seems like just talk when a very reasonable and original dream like this is denied by a monolithic bureaucracy like the BCLDB.

Is it time for CAMRA BC to make a stand on Gluten-Free Breweries? Should a new category be created to fix this Catch 22? It might be too late for the Maynes but in an age where a gluten-free lifestyle is becoming more common, should the government relax these rules to foster creativity and originality or is it more important that they remain rigid in their outlook?

On behalf of CAMRA BC and it’s members I would like to send our sympathies to Dennis and Peggy and wish them every success in the future, especially now they need to find new jobs.

Adam Chatburn

President, CAMRA BC – Vancouver Branch.

Comments

One response to “BC’s First Gluten-Free Brewery Ends in Heartbreak”

Peter Corrin

April 24, 2018

Curious if there has been any changes with LCB. The other issue with Canada is that Health Canada’s definition of beer is very limited. It can only be made with malted Barley where as almost all other countries it is any malted grain. I was hoping to open a GF Brewery as well and there are many hurdles with our archaic government. Cheers

BC’s First Gluten-Free Brewery Ends in Heartbreak

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One response to “BC’s First Gluten-Free Brewery Ends in Heartbreak”

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