The Spotlight is a series of interviews with organizations who support CAMRA and the craft beer heroes behind them. This week we chat to Barry Benson, one of the men behind venerable East Van beer institution R&B Brewing, which has been serving up micro brews for locals since 1997.
How long has R&B Brewing been around?
16 wonderful years!
How would you describe what R&B Brewing does to the uninitiated?
R&B has been educating and changing peoples‘palates ever since we began. We offer a full range of beer styles suitable for everyone. Through our dedication to bring more people into the craft beer world, R&B was actually the first brewery to not only start up the cask program over 10 years ago, but also brewmaster dinners.
Coming from 5 microbreweries to over 55 is the obvious one. More interesting beers, casks programs every day of the week, cask festivals, brewery dinners on a regular basis.
What are the values reflected in the East Van community that prompted you to first start up a brewery in the neighbourhood?
Being part of a neighbourhood, part of a close and slightly edgy community.
What size brew set up do you have?
20 hl
You have just started doing growler fills – what has the response been from beer drinkers to this?
Growler sales are temporarily suspended pending issuing of our retail license (very soon we hope). But our few few weekends were great! Lots of locals! We do still offer party kits as about 5% of our business is home parties.
What do you currently have on tap for fills?
We offer our full line of 7 beers (depending on availability) for home parties in 19 litre and 50 litre kegs at this time until our Growler Station is back up and running. We will keep everyone posted on facebook and twitter.
What is your favourite beer at the moment?
It seems that the brewery choice right now seems to be the East Side Bitter.
Do you guys have any special casks coming up or new releases?
We just finished having an event with Bottleworks and Todd had created 3 casks with a mushroom theme to match the food.There will be more casks like that in the near future. Todd is working on a collaboration beer with folks at The Whip Restaurant.
The newest release coming out is our Winter seasonal-the Auld Nick, A Scottish Wee Heavy, which will be available in 650 ml bottles only, going into the LDB system next week!
R&B Brewing are located at 54 East 4th Avenue and you can find them online here. Keep an eye out on their Facebook and Twitter for when they’ll be starting up growler fills again.
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