Documentation:Granville Island Beer

Introduction to the Granville Island Brewery

The Granville Island Brewing Company is a Canada’s first microbrewery that opened in 1984 on Granville Island, Vancouver. Their brewing process is based on the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516 to guarantee only premium beers were produced their facilities. In addition to their mainline of beers that are regularly release, the brewery also offers seasonal limited edition beers with innovative ingredients every year. The company current brews the majority of their products in facilities located in Kelowna. However, their seasonal limited edition beers are produced on the Granville Island site.

The regular line up of beers that Granville Island Brewing Company offers are the following:

• Brockton IPA
• Cypress Honey Lager
• Gastown Amber Ale
• Island Lager
• Kitsilano Maple Cream Ale
• English Bay Pale Ale
• Robson Street Hefeweizen

The Material Culture of Granville Island Beer

During the period after the Great Depression, Granville Island was a desolate area heavily polluted by crowded manufacturing factories. It was in the 1980s that Vancouver city officials set about to revitalize Granville Island into a “people friendly site with recreational centers, farmers markets, and parkland. Granville Island Brewing was a large part in the vitalization when it opened in 1984 as the first Canadian microbrewery. Today, the brewery is still open and enjoys great demand and respect among locals. Their beers have become a permanent fixture in the Vancouver pub and restaurant scene; It has been commented, in the Vancouver Metro, that it is difficult to find any local food establishment that does not offer at the very least one variety of beverage that the Granville Island Brewing offers. Advertisements and signs bearing the Granville Island Brewing logo are also in abundance throughout the city. Particularly popular among locals are the seasonal limited release beers that the brewery offers and brews at the Granville Island site. To cater to locals, Granville Island Brewing has a taproom where the curious can purchase tasters and glasses of these seasonal beers.

As a tribute to the city that has loved the Granville Island brewing for so many years, many of the brewery’s products are named after famous regions throughout Vancouver. The most popular of these products is the Granville Island Lager, named after the island where the Brewery was founded. In addition, as an shift from it's usual role as a brewery, Granville Island Brewing become a sponsor and support for local charitable organizations and sports teams.

The Local, Regional, and Global Pathways of Granville Island Beer

Granville Island Brewing is a brewery based in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was founded in 1984 and is Canada’s first microbrewery, producing only limited amounts of beer. Because it is a microbrewery, the company does not ship internationally and limits its exports to British Columbia and Alberta. Even though the franchising of this company is limited to within the local and regional area, according to The Bellingham Herald they choose to create new flavors a to be able to “expand our customers’ palates with even bolder, more unique flavours.” The fixed inputs used in order to produce natural beer include malted barely, yeast, hops and water. A majority of their ingredients are found locally however; their malted barley is imported from all over the world – British Columba, Saskatchewan, Minnesota, Belgium and England. The Granville Island Brewery proves to be a sustainable company because they use local ingredients while only exporting to local and regional areas. In comparison with larger companies, such as Molson, the Brewery has kept their manufacturing sites nearby – one situated directly under the Granville Bridge and the larger site located in Kelowna, in the Okanagan Valley. This in turn makes the Brewery more environmentally friendly because there is less fuel consumption involved in the transportation process!

Love for the region is shown through naming flavours after well-known locations in the Lower Mainland, such as English Bay Pale Ale, Kitsilano Maple Cream Ale, and Gastown Amber Ale. The Brewery sees the benefits of investment in the local community. As a microbrewery, they are able to connect with the people in the region than if they were a larger franchise. Their website lists their involvement in “sponsorship and charitable support, involvement with local sports teams, community organizations and more.” Additionally, a portion of all sales is dedicated to the Stanley Park Restoration Project. By taking part in events and organizations in the area, they are able to do give back to their community while promoting their brand. It is a beneficial relationship for both parties; the brewery will receive more business. In the interest of being a local company, the Granville Island Brewery is also dedicated to using local ingredients. In addition, on their website they state, “No chemicals or preservatives are used in making our beer. None. Only all-natural honey, maple syrup, raspberries and whatever other local ingredients inspire us.”

The Energy History of Granville Island Beer

Brewing of beer dates well back into history and existed long before sustainability, mass production and consumption were ever woven into any corporate initiatives. Granville Island produces on average 15 Hecto Liters of Beer yearly. However the brewery in Granville Island is only responsible for 1% of the total beer production.

Whilst Granville Island Brewery lacks any advanced form of energy saving and/or sustainable machinery, they do participate in a few initiatives to reduce their energy footprint. Some of these include, saving the spent grains from the brewing process and donating them to local farmers for cattle feed. They re-use the cooling water for their heat exchanger during processing and recapture the heat to be recirculated through to other machinery. In an interview with the brew master Vern, he informed me that all of Granville Island's staff is very energy conscience and are responsible when it comes to turning off lights, closing refrigerator doors, and 'doing all the small things' that add up to make a larger impact. Some of their competitors have begun taking much larger steps towards becoming environmentally sustainable. These companies, while few and far between, could provide a framework and baseline for which an environmentally conscience company such as Granville Island beer could build and expand upon. This is especially true for a small company with plans to expand in both production and distribution range.

John Curran of MSNBC with the aid of the Associated Press recently published a report focusing on a few breweries that have implemented an array of energy saving processes. Vermont’s Magic Hat Brewing Co. has recently installed a system that collects waste barley, hops, water and yeast and places them into an anaerobic methane digester that then produces methane gas. The methane gas is then used to further fuel the brewing process. Anheuser-Busch has in place a method to capture excess heat generated during the brewing process and is then able to use that heat to de-ice its loading dock during winter weather. Coors sells its ethanol by-products to refineries in Colorado. Some European countries collect and dry leftover biomass and products to be burned and the resulting heat is collected and used in the process of brewing more beer.

The entire process of making beer is very energy intensive. Each step of Granville Island’s 7-step process requires large energy inputs. Since Granville Island Beer is a micro-brewery, with some of the production steps still done by hand/manual labour, it is safe to say that Granville Island beer would have a much reduced carbon/energy footprint than any if its other larger competitors. However, with the trend of sustainability catching on in the brewery world, Granville Island Brewery may yet have to adapt and evolve new energy efficient ways if it is to retain its local green image. There are a few things we can do to make the brewing of beer more sustainable and to reduce the energy footprint of its production and consumption processes. These include:

·Buying locally produced beer, such as Granville Island, with locally sourced ingredients.

·Recycling beer bottles.

·Investigating and supporting companies that have a firm commitment to sustainable practices.

·Giving feedback and suggestions to companies that are not operating sustainably.

7-Steps in Granville Island Beer Production:

1-Grinding: Malted barley is ground inside a malt mill and grist auger to produce grist. This is all done via the use of a mill machine.

2-Mashing: Grist is mixed with hot water to produce mash and then mixture is pumped into a lauter turn. This process is energy intensive as all the water must be heated and then the mixture mechanically pumped through into the lauter turn.

3-Lautering: The mash is then sieved and the resulting wort is pumped across a kettle leaving behind spent grains. These spent grains are saved and used as livestock feed elsewhere. Energy is required to push the mash through the sieve and also to pump it across the kettle.

4-Boil: The wort is then boiled and afterwards cooled via a heat exchanger and transferred to a fermenter. This part of the process requires a large input of energy as the entire volume of premature beer must be boiled and then consequently cooled. The use of a heat exchanger does make the process somewhat more energy efficient.

5-Fermentation: The liquid is then fermented, ales for 3-5 days and lagers for 10-14 days. Throughout this entire process, the liquid must be monitored and kept cool to within a specific temperature range in order to keep the yeast cells alive. After this time, the beer is then transferred to conditioning/aging tanks.

6-Aging: The beer matures here with ales requiring 4-6 weeks and lagers requiring 6-8 weeks. The beers must be kept to 4 degrees(C) in order to produce the ideal product. With fermentation as with aging, energy consumption is primarily limited to the maintenance of this ideal temperature.

7-Bottling, Shipping and Consumption: The majority of Granville Island beer is not brewed in Vancouver and is reserved for those breweries in Kelowna and other parts of BC. Machines bottle the beer and in some cases they are then hand packed into boxed and labeled for shipping to sale destinations in Alberta and BC. Shipping of the finished product is obviously energy intensive as it must be transmitted by car/truck to its final destinations and therefore contributes a large part to the beers carbon/energy footprint. The benefit of Granville Island beer here being that it is local and limits its shipping to within BC and Alberta. This is very different in contrast to other breweries that ship globally.

References

Curran, John. “Inventor turns brewery into natural gas” MSNBC. 15 February 2011. 7 April 2011 <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41579366/ns/us_news-environment/>

"Granville Island Brewing - Restaurant Information - The Bellingham Herald." Bellingham WA Events & Entertainment - The Bellingham Herald. Web. 06 Apr. 2011. <http://calendar.bellinghamherald.com/vancouver-bc/venues/show/734428-granville-island-brewing>.

"The Story of Granvile Island Brewing." Granville Island Brewing. 06 April 2011. <http://gib.ca/our-story>.

"The Story of Granvile Island Brewing." Granville Island Brewing. 07 April 2011. <http://gib.ca/about/how-we-brew/>

Worthington, David. “Brewers Exploit the Energy Potential of Beer”. Smart Planet. 15 Feb 2011. 7 April 2011 <http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/intelligent-energy/brewers-exploit-the-energy-potential-of-beer/4824/>

Vern - 'Head Brewmaster for Granville Island Brewery'. Personal Interview. 8 April 2011.