RCB soon to quench thirst
Story by Katie Ryan - LLOYDMINSTER SOURCE
Ribstone Creek Brewery – the name rolls off your tongue, said founder Don Paré. And by the fall, it will hopefully be wetting the whistles of many.
The Edgerton, Alta., brewery is the brainchild of four founders and longtime friends – Paré, Chris Fraser, Cal Hawkes and Alvin Gordon – who for the past three years have been working to establish a rural craft brewery. And while they won’t be opening the doors to their brewery soon, they are in the midst of finalizing their recipe.
“All indications are that within two months we should have beer,” said Paré. “People have said ‘Darn rights, we’ll bring it in and we’ll try it.’ That’s where we hope it will take off from.”
The frothy project began in 2009 when the four friends – “four boys from the prairies who don’t know anything about the beer,” said Paré – were brainstorming on business ideas that could thrive in a small town.
“Something that would draw interest, something that would just be of value to the whole community,” said Paré. “You can build furniture or do an arts thing and it’s going to be like every other thing, in a few years it fizzles out and interest drops. But craft brewing is a real growth thing. Everyone has an interest in locally made beer or beer that’s made somewhere nearby that they know. And I think, to establish our base area, that is what is going to sell for us – we have something that is brewed out here in the middle of rural Alberta.”
Fellow founder Gordon, who is the CAO of the Village of Edgerton, gave the project its initial push by offering up a building he owned in Edgerton as the brewery’s future site.
“That upped that ante,” said Gordon, who attended Grade 1 with Fraser and Hawkes in Edgerton. “My recollection of everything is that Cal had been talking to Don, that we should be making some beer since Edgerton has such good water.”
But opening a brewery has proved to have its share of hurdles. From securing investors to equipment and a laundry list of other priorities, the learning curve has been steep, admitted Paré, a third-generation Chauvin-area farmer.
“Once we had developed this idea, we realized that our Achilles’ heel is that we have no idea how to make beer,” he said with a laugh.
By researching other breweries and enquiring about brewing equipment, the four founders have grown to five, with the addition of veteran brewmaster David Beardsell, who is now RCB’s brewing consultant. A professional brewer for the past 15 years, Beardsell studied the art of crafting beer in Europe, started the Bear Brewing Company in B.C., which thanks to a full share transfer fell under the umbrella of the Big Rock Brewery Group, among other achievements. Beardsell is the right fit for Ribstone Creek Brewery, according to Paré.
“He calls himself a ‘yeast geek.’ He loves to experiment with different beers and he is a pioneer of the industry,” he said. “He’s the key for us. He’s got the expertise, the experience and he will tell us how to build the brewery, and he will oversee the whole operation. Our concentration will be to actually run the business end of it and make that a success.”
Instead of brewing beer in Edgerton, as initially planned, today Ribstone Creek Brewery has a contract with Yellowhead Brewery of Edmonton, whose own brewmaster studied alongside Beardsell. Together, they are determining what product will serve RCB best.
“The brewmasters are like thoroughbred horses, a little hard to handle and you have to be very gentle with them,” said Paré with a laugh. “The hype is out there and we need a product out there.”
There is a large market for light beer, according to a survey conducted last year by Edmonton research firm Leger Marketing, based on demographic information from the Wainwright-Edergton-Chauvin area. With that in mind, the brewmasters are developing a “European flavour, full-tasting and mellow sort of a lager beer,” said Paré.
“They are European beer guys, so we are more or less trying to match a bright clean tasting Canadian style beer with a European full bodied flavour,” he continued. “Our first thrust for this fall will be to bring back draft beer and see how it goes over, and because of the logistics of it, hopefully in a few weeks after that we have some can product to make available to the public.”
Setting up a brewing facility in Edgerton will follow once funds are in place. Renovations and upgrades for the Edgerton building, which dates back to the 1940s and was once a automotive garage, are pegged at $100,000. With about two dozen investors on board, Paré said RCB is one-third of the way to where they’d like to be.
“There’s not a person out there when you ask them about investing in something they go ‘Oh, no, no we’re not that interested.’ And then you say ‘We are building a brewery.’ And all of a sudden they spin on their heel and they go ‘Really? Where are you building it?’” he said with a chuckle. “Lloydminster has just been a great hot spot of interest for us. Some of our biggest investors right now are from Lloydminster. As we are telling ourselves it has to be a good product, but at the same time everybody is going to give us a chance because people are just very interested.
“Our goal right now would to have the money in place at least by Christmas time to get started on construction.”
Earlier in July RCB founders met at the future brewery site to discuss their goals going forward, which include designs and marketing strategies, as well as the search for a web-design firm.
“You have to be very flexible,” said Paré. “Today we are building a brewery, tomorrow we are going to contract brew. It’s a continually evolving thing and I think that’s how the business will always be.”
Named for the Ribstone Creek – which is a rough translation of the Cree word “assinikospikeganit” that refers to a stone with markings resembling a rib cage – the brewery’s business plan is to push its thirst-quenching product within a 100-mile radius of Edgerton. By establishing that base area, the brewery can introduce its yet-to-be named brew to some 500 liquor outlets. A few names have already been tossed around, said Paré, listing Back Road Brew and Stubble Jumper as possibilities.
“We’re from the country and we want to identify with those people,” he said. “We don’t want to produce the cheapest product in the business. We want to produce a premium product but we do want to make it affordable to everyone.
“Ideas? We have a million of them,” Paré continued, adding if RCB proves to be a success, the business idea could be taken to other communities. “Instead of building one massive brewery, as has been done in the past, why don’t you take this idea and move it to another small town in Saskatchewan and do the same thing?”
But first, nailing down their brew’s recipe is at the top of their agenda. When Paré and his fellow founders do toast their first cold one together, he said he imagines it will be a weight lifted off their shoulders this fall. And while there has been a lot of behind the scenes work accomplished over the years to reach that point – tasting RCB’s first batch of beer – Gordon said it will be a positive sign for the community and potential investors.
“It will be good all the way around. They will see something happening and it will be good for our mental health, I think,” he said with a laugh.
“It will be a real step forward so that we know we are going ahead. And I can’t wait.”
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