LOCAL FEATURE: GRAIN BIN BREWING CO

Our marketing gal Kelsey got to chat with Dalen Landis from Grain Bin Brewing co! Grain Bin is a consumer driven craft brewery right here in our beautiful city of Grande Prairie, Alberta. Read about how Grain Bin came to be, how their beers are brewed and what makes this local brewery so special.

’When did Grain Bin open?”

“The opening date depends on what you use as the milestone dates, we were incorporated in July in 2016, we got our licensing sorted and brewed our very first batch of beer Christmas Eve 2016, and our retail store opened for growler fills February 3rd of 2017. That’s when our beer became available to the public.”

“What started your passion for brewing?”

“I think it’s a pretty common story that we share with a lot of other Alberta breweries. I had been brewing out of high school just as a hobby. Once me and some of my friends started getting married and having kids, and all those other lifetime commitments started to pile up it was hard to find time to brew.

It’s one of those hobbies that’s hurry up and wait. You have a really busy day and then you have two or three weeks where nothing happens and then another busy day where you’re packaging the product. It was really hard to commit to a full day of Saturday when you have other responsibilities at home, so what we started doing was shift brewing, so whenever someone had some time, maybe I would I start a batch and then at lunchtime someone would take over and someone else would package or clean.

And we found that was super beneficial, we could get our brewing fix in without committing the full time. And for making 5 gallons of beer or so, It was still an appropriate amount spilt between 3 or 4 ways rather than one person trying to figure out what they were going to do with 5 gallons of beer. So that’s sort of how it initially started.

Alberta did have minimum volume requirements, but they changed that in 2016 and when those changes were announced we started taking the idea of brewing seriously because the volumes could be at a more approachable level. We knew we’d be able to do things the way we wanted to do without those restrictive limits.”

"Can you walk me through how your products are made for somebody who doesn’t know much about brewing beer?"

“The first step is essentially deciding what you want to make. For recipe development there is a lot of science behind it. You can have a pretty decent idea of what you’ll expect the beer to turn out as. We don’t go into a beer or have an idea and be like “I have no idea how this will turn out” we have at least some good idea, but we do experiment with obscure ingredients and processes and so there might be some processes that you have to just do it and see what happens. But once we have the recipe developed, we make sure we get the ingredients.

We primarily use Alberta grown and malted barley, but we do include a lot of wheat, rye and oats. Once we have those in the amounts, we need we mill it, so we crush the grain not quite as fine as powder but more like cracking the kernels. Once it’s milled, we kind of make oatmeal. We add hot water to it, it sits in this hot oatmeal bath for a while, usually an hour, and then we strain the liquid off and leave behind the solids like the mushy oatmeal.

Once we collect all the liquid, we call it sweet wort at that point. The hot water reacts with the enzymes in the malts and produces different sugars, so that’s what we’re after, the sugary liquid. That gets transferred to a boil kettle, and then we boil it for an hour, sometimes more. The boiling sterilizes the wort and then lots of hop and/or spice additions get added at that point. The earlier you add hops to the boil, the more bitterness you get out of the beer. Almost all of our beer contains some degree of hops, if they don’t contain hops the beer would end up cloyingly sweet. So even a beer you don’t consider a hoppy beer is still going to contain hops.”

“So adding hops gives the beer more balance?”

“Yeah, yeah it rounds out the flavour profile and gives it that special aroma and makes sure it’s not just pure sugar water that you’re drinking.”

“Makes sense!”

“Yeah, so once it’s boiled we cool it down and put it in a fermenter. At that point it’s bitter wort. So as brewers we just produce wort, it’s the yeast that makes beer. So once it’s cool and in the fermenter we pitch our yeast and depending on the beer it takes as little as a week and we have some beers we ferment or age for over a year. The yeast consumes all those sugars and converts those carbs into alcohol. And once that’s done we cool it down, carbonate it and package it in kegs, bottles or cans.”

“Wow that’s quite the process!” (who knew making beer was so complicated? I certainly didn’t!)

“Yeah, it takes a lot longer than people realize. A two week turn around would be an insanely quick beer, typically it’s three weeks +. And like I mentioned we have some beers that we further age either in barrels or maturation tanks. And it would be one, one and a half year before the public actually tastes it.”

"That’s so crazy but that makes the beer really special too."

“Yeah, lots of time for you to think about it and put in extra love and thought and care.”

"What inspires you when it comes to making beer or when you’re developing a new recipe?"

“Customer feedback is huge, we even have a series called the democracy series where people can vote online for the next beer we produce. It’s essentially whatever one wins that’s the one we’re going to brew next. We also have a community series where we work with local non for profits and produce a beer for them, and promote their efforts and part of the proceeds go to the non for profit. So we work hand in hand with them that kind of fits their vibe to make sure it’s on par with what they’re doing. And with our brewery size we have a ton of flexibility to react to market demand. We can change it up pretty quickly to produce what people want to buy. Alot of what we do is driven by what consumers ask from us.”

"That’s really cool, I feel like that answer probably ties into my next question which is what makes Grain Bin different?"

“I think that flexibility is a huge thing but also Grain Bin was started by a group of people that were all from the surrounding area. I’m from Wembley, we have somebody from Bezanson, Grande Prairie, La Glace. It’s all people from the surrounding area.”

“Grain Bin is truly local!” (just take a look at their Muskoseepi inspired brew above, can't get much more local than that!)

“Yeah, we want to make sure we are promoting that as well. We feel like community involvement, whether it’s our democracy series, or community series, that is part of what makes us unique. But our size is pretty unique that we’re able to change things on the fly a lot easier than some of the larger breweries are able to. For example, we have our Nordic Golden Ale, which is brewed for the Storm Junior A hockey team in town. We are able to produce a local beer, for a local hockey team and brand them with the names and numbers of team players on each can. We have a lot of flexibility with our size to do that sort of thing.

Recently we released a new beer, a Mojito Pale Ale and we did that in conjunction with a local law firm for what they call their “back to local” initiative, so they promote a local producer, we make a product that’s co-branded with them and they make a donation to a local non-profit. So for every 4 pack of this Mojito Pale Ale sold $3 goes to our local Salvation Army food bank.

So because of the size we are we can produce enough volume for projects like this to be successful but we’re also small enough that we have the flexibility to fit some of these last minute projects in”

“That’s really cool, it’s incredible to see companies like yours giving back to the community. For my last question, it’s a difficult one- What’s your favorite product and why?”

“It changes with the weather, but I think the beer I’m enjoying the most is probably our Helles Gate, it’s a German style Munich Helles so it’s a light lager and I find it’s the one is unique enough that it’s interesting, but drinkability is high enough that it’s repeatable; you can have a few and enjoy them.

But the one that I’m most proud of are the beers that come out of our Sour program- so we do have some sour beers we produce with wild and natural yeasts. We’ve had a ton of success with those, not only in awards both nationally, internationally and provincially, but I also feel that those are a very unique beer to Alberta. Not a lot of Alberta breweries are producing natural sours and I think we do a great job with them.”

Thank you to Dalen from Grain Bin for taking the time to chat with us!

Is there a local brewery, distillery or winery that you want us to interview? Reach out to us at marketing@newhorizon.crs for your suggestions!