In an act of neighbourhood patriotism, residents of Pemberton Heights in North Vancouver have pulled together to brew a beer that benefits their community.
Scott Dempster and the Pemberton Heights Neighbourhood Association recently decided on a signature brew to raise funds for future community activities. Dempster highlights the “old-school” quality of their area, and says the community is tight knit and connected with pride for their home turf.
“I would say about 60 per cent of my friend base now is within the neighbourhood,” he says. “On any given Friday or Saturday night, my wife and I have two boys, and we commonly get together with our friends in the afternoons or evenings and have dinner and, quite honestly, everyone drinks. So why not sell a product that everyone’s going to be having anyway?”
He sees their product as an opportunity to share the pride they all feel for their community with friends and guests from around the Lower Mainland. “You can say look at this cool product; our beer for our neighbourhood.”
Working in partnership with Bridge Brewing, the team wanted to appeal to the masses and make a beer that would be easy to sip on. Dempster explains that to get a custom brew, they had to agree to make a full tank of their product, which would equal roughly 2,100 craft beer bottles of 650 mililitres. Once packaged, that would produce 175 cases of beer to be sold, and when the North Shore News talked with Dempster for this story, he reported they had already sold 100 cases at $82 each. Approximately a third of those sales will be donated back to the neighbourhood association, around $24 per case.
Dempster describes the beer as a Kolsch style, light and perfect for summer. After a round of tasting and smelling a combination of Bridge’s company brews with neighbour and brewmaster Jeremy Taylor, they decided on the Kolsch and added citrus hops to make it their own.
“We went with a beer that everyone would be interested in. Kolsch is very similar to say a lager or a pilsner style beer, in that everyone will drink it,” says Dempster. “We didn’t want to come out with an India pale ale, dark and very hop-y, because our sales wouldn’t be nearly as good as they’ve been. An IPA might only appeal to 20 per cent of our market, where we want to be able to reach everyone with this.”
In an effort to get more people involved, Dempster and the team started a photo contest to further customize their product. Inspired by the classic Jones Soda labels, they put out a call for creative pictures of the neighbourhood taken by its residents to place in the framed center of their label.
“We wanted to get people excited about the project and motivated to be a part of it,” he explains, sounding excited as he delves into the details. “It’s really cool because it lets people have their image on the bottle, and it’s something cool again to bring it into more of a community project.”
After the initial success of this project, the neighbourhood association is mulling over ideas for an autumn brew or even a wine from a vineyard in the interior owned by a couple in the area.
“We’re probably going to try and do this as a by-annual thing, where we would do a spring beer, like what we’re doing right now, and then we’ll probably do a fall beer as well, like an ale or a winter ale, and do the fundraiser twice a year,” Dempster says.
The association’s beer launch party will be on April 16 at the Corner Stone Bistro in Pemberton Heights where they’ll be serving the custom batch on tap from 4 to 7 p.m.
