Tap space is often dear, but many Canadian breweries are finding it makes good business sense to dedicate one or more taps to quality non-alcoholic beverages to cater to light drinkers and non-drinkers coming to the taproom with friends.
For microbrewery fans, the local brewery’s tasting room isn’t just a place to go drink. Tasting rooms are chummy, sociable spaces where people go to hang out with friends and neighbours and meet other local folks.
While these places have obvious appeal to beer fans, some brewery owners have noticed social groups often include customers who can’t drink, or need to limit how much they imbibe. Some are designated drivers. Others are pregnant women or nursing mothers, who have good reason to limit their beer intake. Groups may even include former alcoholics who no longer drink but still pal around with people who do. Yet it’s hard to feel a part of the group when everyone raises a toast and the only thing you have in your glass is water.
At Microbrasserie Aux Fous Brassant (auxfousbrassant.com), a small-town brewery located on the south shore of the St.-Lawrence river about two hours north of Quebec City in historic Rivière-du-Loup, co-owner Eric Viens has kept one tap for locally made kombucha, a popular fermented tea drink, for about a year now. But this February, the brewery upped the ante after an employee suggested staff take part in a Dry February challenge (https://www.defi28jours.com/en/) to raise money for the Jean Lapointe Foundation’s teen drug and alcohol addiction awareness programs. Staff were game for the challenge, with 38 employees eventually signing on to abstain from alcohol in February, raising $3,000 for the cause — triple their initial goal.
Viens said he and his team saw the challenge as an opportunity to nudge people to reflect on their attitudes and habits around alcohol. But the challenge also highlighted how hard it can be for teetotallers to participate fully in social experiences when beer, wine, or spirits are a central part of the experience.
“It’s more festive if you’re not drinking to have something special to drink,” said Viens.
To make it easier on staff and customers who had signed on to the 28-day challenge, Aux Fous Brassant added a non-alcoholic beer on tap, along with a hop-flavoured sparkling water, and cold-brew coffee. Viens also brought in canned and bottled products, including a non-alcoholic wine.
“People really loved having these non-alcoholic products,” Viens said. “We sold more than 400 litres (106 gallons) of non-alcoholic product during February. Clients wanted to have these options all year round.”
While the plethora of non-alcoholic choices were a temporary feature during the 28-day challenge, Viens said feedback from customers was so positive that he’s considering adding another permanent non-alcoholic tap. He said many customers drank both beer and one or more non-alcoholic options, particularly if they were driving home. Others wrote to the brewery to thank them for offering alternatives for those who did not drink, as it allowed them to join friends who were going out for beers. Some first-time customers came specifically to sample the non-alcoholic options, he said.
On the other side of the country, in British Columbia, the founders of New Westminster’s Steel & Oak Brewing Co. planned for a non-alcoholic tap from the first in order to support a family-friendly social culture. Since the doors to the tasting room opened in 2014, the brewery has dedicated one tap to locally made lemonade, which has become so popular that co-owner Jorden Foss said he doesn’t dare remove it.
“I don’t think I could have imagined how much of an effect it would have,” Foss said. “We even have parents who will come in and get a growler for themselves and they’ll fill up a one-litre (one-quart) growler with lemonade for the kids for the weekend.”
The lemonade gambit worked to attract new customers beyond the stereotypical plaid-shirted, bearded hipsters you’d expect to haunt a craft beer tasting room. Very shortly after launch, Steel & Oak became a regular spot on the stroller circuit, as groups of stay-at-home moms and those enjoying Canada’s one-year-long maternity leave started coming by in groups after walking together on the nearby riverfront boardwalk. Dads, too, began meeting buddies at the brewery to fill growlers and see what’s new on tap while the kids visited with each other over tiny glasses of lemonade, which the Vancouver-area brewery offers to children for free.
But the lemonade’s not just for kids. Steel & Oak also offers made-to-order radlers , a popular German variation on a shandy that mixes equal parts of beer and lemonade, with any brew on tap. Although radlers are typically made with lagers or wheat beers, customers enjoy tasting the variations in flavour from blending other types of beer with the lemonade, Foss said. The brewery will occasionally bring in seasonal lemonade flavours as well to offer some variety, such as cranberry or blackberry lemonade over the holidays.
Because radlers dilute the beer with lemonade, it offers a lighter-drinking option for those who want to enjoy a beer without feeling intoxicated. It’s popular among the stroller brigade, as well as designated drivers, but in summer the radlers also draw squadrons of hard-peddling, spandex-clad cyclists looking for a refreshing rest stop on their circuits through hilly Vancouver.
The lemonade is made from a concentrate produced by Kics Lemonade (kicslemonade.ca), a staple at local farmers markets. Foss said the brewery’s steady orders have stabilized what is otherwise a very seasonal business, supporting Kics to expand into new markets. Kics is now an essential ingredient in several other local breweries’ radlers too, he said.
Steel & Oak has also recently begun offering bottles of ginger beer from RainCity Juicery (raincityjuicery.com) in the tasting room, which is produced by another nearby New Westminster business. Foss said he has considered adding even more non-alcoholic options, but with a tasting room capacity of just 50 seats, he is limited in how many taps he can offer and how much space he can allocate for soda pop and other non-beer options.
In Nelson, B.C., an eight-hour drive through the Rocky Mountains from Vancouver, Torchlight Brewing Co. (torchlightbrewing.com) expanded their offerings to add a line of craft sodas on tap about a year after the launch of the brewery in 2014. According to co-owner and brewmaster Craig Swendson, the idea to add pop on tap was initially just a fun experiment to occupy extra taps before the brewery got up to full capacity.
“It was a fun little add-on product. We wanted to try something new and experiment with some things,” Swendson said.
Experiment they did. Torchlight’s sodas offer novel flavours like ginger beer with juniper berries and Veronica herb, and coffee cream soda with cold-brew coffee and marshmallow root. They also offer a line of Italian sodas, made with hand-crafted orange, grapefruit, lemon or lime syrup mixed with sparkling water. For an extra treat, customers can also order a Cremosa — an Italian soda topped with whipped cream.
The sodas have become so popular that when the business grew from nano- to microbrewery and moved to a larger location, Torchlight built in extra taps in order to maintain a variety of non-alcoholic offerings. The brewery now typically offers 14 or 15 beers on tap, plus one tap for a house-made mineral soda water and three for craft sodas.
Torchlight has a brewpub license, so unlike other microbreweries that can only serve beer in their taproom, they also offer food and a full bar setup, where the sodas do double duty as mixers in craft cocktails. While they don’t always have beer cocktails on the feature sheet, Swendson said they will mix shandies for customers on request, with the brew and soda of their choice. Tasting flights of four five-ounce glasses and growler fills are offered for beer and soda alike.
Swendson said it’s hard to tell if the non-alcoholic taps are a significant draw for new customers, but he believes they do encourage customers to come back more often than they would otherwise.
“A lot of people come in and bring their children, so it’s nice to have an extra option for kids and others who aren’t drinking beer,” Swendson said. “It’s nice for parents to be able to go somewhere with their kids and still feel like they’re in an adult place, as opposed to a place that is designed more for children.”