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| Big Rock Brewery Ltd. |
The Big Rock Brewery Limited produces some if not the best naturally made beer in Canada and the whole North America. Among the beer brands that has come out of this brewery are the Grasshopper Wheat Ale, the Cold Cock Winter Porter and the Warthog Cream Ale. Their names may seem funny but humor is part of the attraction of the beers produced by the Brewery.
The success of the Big Rock Brewery is attributed to the passion and industry exerted by the brewery’s employees to create a hundred percent unpasteurized and naturally-made beer. However, the company’s existence is due to the vision of a lawyer turned barley farmer named Ed McNally.
McNally, an Albertan who grew up in Lethbridge, got his inspiration from seeing the successful beer business of Sick’s Brewery. However his break came after he was chosen as the lawyer of a group of barley growers in Alberta. The barley farmers sued the Canadian Wheat Board for not paying them the right price for premium barley.
McNally’s appointment as a member of the Alberta Barley Growers Board of Directors gave him a deeper understanding of the beer business. He discovered that Alberta grew the world’s finest malting barley. Upon knowing that the Canada Malting Company, the biggest malting firm in the world, was located in Calgary, McNally did not waste his time, grew barley and the rest is history.
McNally’s entry into the brewery business came at a time when financial assistance was hard to come by because of the economic slump but he was able to do it thanks to friends who pooled their money together. But The Big Rock Brewery would not have manufactured their best-tasting beers without Bernd Pieper, the brewmaster.
Calgary’s hosting of the Winter Olympics in 1988 was a big break for the Big Rock as international visitors including the international press had a taste of their natural brews.
The 1990s was a showcase of the successes of the Big Rock Brewery as the company sold its shares to the public, completed the construction of a state of the art facility and hiked its production capacity from 150 thousand hectoliters to 450 thousand hectoliters.
If you want to taste a sample of their beers then go visit the Brewery and join the scheduled tours during Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for only $5 per person. The tour will expose visitors to the world of beer-making. Explore the Mill Room and the Brew Kettle and experience process of fermentation, filtration, kegging, canning and bottling of beers. Everyone on the tour will get a souvenir beer glass from Big Rock. But of course, only adults 18 years old and over, are allowed to join the tour.
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