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January, 1994 Volume 17, Issue 2

U Brew It Stores

By Bryan Gros

Last time I was in Prince George, in Northern BC, Canada, I stopped by their new U-Brew It store. These stores (also called brew on premisis) are very popular across Canada, and ones have recently opened in the Los Angeles and Seattle areas. Basically, you go there and brew your beer on one afternoon and return two weeks later to bottle your beer and take it home. The cost is more than doing it yourself, but you don’t need any equipment or room to ferment in, which makes it great for trying your first batch or for apartment dwellers with limited space.

When you go in, the first thing you notice is the line of copper kettles along the wall. You pick your recipe from the extensive list of choices. I noticed many choices were light lagers: Bud clones, Molson clones, LaBatts clones etc. The price is about $85 and the batch sizes are 12 gallons.

The ingredients used were sparse: light extract syrup, dark syrup, corn sugar, glucose, and hops. Patrons add the right amounts of ingredients for their recipe and boil. After an hour boil, the wort is filtered, chilled and pumped into a fermenter. The beer is fermented for eight days in a room at 65F and then aged six days at 35F. Then the beer is filtered, racked to a stainless steel keg, and force carbonated.

You go back in two weeks to bottle the beer. They use half-liter plastic bottles. Your beer keg is hooked up to the bottler and you counter-pressure fill each bottle and cap them.

There is not much creativity involved at these shops, but the beer is cheaper and at least as good as store bought beers. The reasons for their popularity, according to the ad, includes "concerns about chemicals, preservatives, and increasing taxes". I think the latter reason is the most important one in Canada. The proprietors try to educate their customers on beer styles, but they still get the occasional request for the "Black Label clone". Turns out Black Label is the cheapest beer in the stores!

 


Updated: January 08, 1998.