Beer reforms a boon to Brick Brewery?

Are the recent beer-sale reforms in Ontario a real boon to Kitchener's
Brick Brewery because they also bottle and can the PC-brand beers?
It would have to be since PC foods are the hugely-successful no-name
brands for Loblaws and the many, many grocery stores run by them...

When the Ontario government recently announced that craft beers were to be allocated 20% of the shelf-space at the province's Beer Stores, I was pretty pumped - as both a craft beer drinker (who, for the purpose of research for this blog, will drink any beer once) and Beer Store employee.

But at the same time, when they announced grocery stores would be getting beer, I was curious and well, a bit concerned. Since grocery stores also charge stocking fees, just as the Beer Store and LCBO do, would it mean only the big guns would be able to afford to play in the grocery markets' sandbox? Because if so, the government's claim of diluting the Beer Store "monopoly" would actually just be giving the big boys a new venue to rule.

The former owner of Brick Brewery, Jim Brickman,
downs a Red Cap Ale in the old-style stubbie bottle. The
brewery had Red Cap in these bottles for years and
you know who the biggest purchasers of it were? People
shooting movies set in the 1980s and earlier when
stubbies were the only vessel in which beer was sold!

In the end, as it turned out (and I only learned two days ago), the grocery stores will be held to the same 20% Craft Beer Standards as the Beer Store. Now granted, the Province is expecting to give only 150 beer-selling licences out to grocery stores by May 2017. That's a while from now. But progress and social reform in Ontario moves at exactly two speeds: very slowly... or, well, reverse. If you're lucky enough to be on the receiving end of "very slowly", you go down on one knee, kiss their rings, say 12 Hail Mary's and then back out of the room... also very slowly as not to spook them.

But just prior to knowing that, I was talking to our Brick Brewery driver on Wednesday and asking if he thought it would be only the big names at the grocery store. "Nah," he replied, "I don't think so. I mean, obviously you have to think our PC beers will be in Loblaw's and its (many) affiliates."

Holy crap, I never even thought about that. For those outside Canada, PC, in this case, means President's Choice (and thankfully not politically correct.) And the driver was bang-on since PC brands have been the no-name choice for all food products at Loblaw's for several decades now. And there isn't a Canadian alive who couldn't tell you who the late Dave Nichol is. Though sadly he passed away in 2013, this middle-aged, could-be-your-neighbour guy in the glasses, turned out to be this country's biggest marketing genius.

After losing the rights to the PC line of beers,
Nichols didn't call it a day. He simply created
a brand new line of beers, baring his name.
For a non-drinker, he clearly knew how to pour

While among the higher-ups at Loblaw's back in the 1970s, he created the store's line of no-name discount foods. Except they had a name - President's Choice - and that name soon came to mean for all of us "of superior quality than the brand names." A foodie, Nichol spend a great deal of time in the corporate kitchen with top-notch chefs, inventing new foods, sauces and what-have-you that were good enough to bear the PC label. His home-spun 30-second commercials made a star of this regular guy who came off as persuasive yet genuine and we bought PC products by the score, simply on Dave's word. Most of us believe he hit his pinnacle when they created the President's Choice Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookie. This cookie was so rich and delicious that even people who shun sweets, such as myself, stocked their pantries hard with bags of them.

So what does any of this have to do with beer? Well, let's get to that. Allow me now to explain where the concept of discount beer was introduced to Ontario, courtesy of, you guessed it, Dave Nichol. Now while pulling the following historical info from quite literally a dozen different sources on the internet, it seems that many of them are, in turn, pulling liberally from Allen Winn Sneath's book, Brewed in Canada... meaning I am piggybacking on their piggybacking from his 400-page book. So full credit where it's due to Allen. Cheers, mate! I am uncertain what does and doesn't come from his book so I'll liberally give him all the credit.

Next on my To-Buy List? Allen Winn
Sneath's Brewed in Canada, a look at
this country's three and a half centuries
of brewing in the Great White North.

In 1991, Heineken owned the Amstel Brewery in Hamilton. Since only five or six people in Ontario drank Amstel, it became unprofitable to maintain. In 1992, Nichols approached Cott Corporation, which already make his PC pop line, and they decide to take over the brewery. It then became Lakeport Brewing, given its proximity to Lake Ontario and the waterway ports in the city. Despite being a full-time journalist, I was also working part-time at a Mississauga Beer Store at this time and I'll be honest, I have little (or no) recollection of the brewery's first efforts - Around Ontario, Laker and Laker Light (back then, I mean - now Laker is property of Brick.) But the next one, oh, I remember it well. It was the President's Choice Premium Draft. They was notable for three reasons. One, it was a buck cheaper for a 12-pack than the Labatt and Molson's products that ruled the roost, making it the first discount beer we had ever encountered. Two, I was the first person, customer and employee alike, to buy it the night it came in. And three, once the advertisements hit the air, we were sold out within the week. All Beer Stores were. Nichol, who was a non-drinker, had an unlikely hit on his hands.

But the big boys were not ones to sit on their thumbs when it came to someone else gaining both attention and market-share and within the year, Molson released the still-popular discount line of Carling beers while Labatt responded with the now-defunct Wildcat line. (Full disclosure, given how much Wildcat Lager and Wildcat Strong I used to drink, I'm stunned it's not still around.)

You have craft beer tastes but a pauper's
budget? Try this one then. PC Black Lager
stands up quite well and at $9.95/six cans
or $36 a case, this is a very strong outing.

Sometime in 1994, Labatt scooped the rights to the PC line of beers so in turn, Nichol, still owning the rights to the Premium Draft recipe, simply released an identically-priced beer line called Dave Nichol's Personal Selection. Even though my beer tastes were pretty unrefined at the time, I could see little difference between the two lines. Then a year later, Molson snatched up the rights to Nichol's brands from Cott and man... this is confusing, eh? Eventually, Lakeport just started brewing their own Lakeport line, Brick Brewery got the rights to the discount Laker line and that's more or less how it still stands. I think. I need to draw a chart or something here. Except some time later, Brick also snagged the PC line and started brewing the still-discount PC line under the name White Water Brewing. Within Brick's walls these days, there are three separate entities: Brick Brewing, Water Water Brewing and Waterloo Brewing for their small-batch craft beers. I have reviewed it before in the distant past but try the Waterloo Amber - a plunky and tasty 6.8% Marzen lager that uses six malts, including rye malt for its punchy taste. I tried it nearly two years ago as part of a Waterloo Mix-Six and went onto other things until co-worker Marie steered me back towards it recently. Good call.

A year after freezing Steam Whistle out of
the Rogers Centre, craft beer has returned
to Toronto Blue Jays' games with this year's
addition of Hockley Valley Dark Ale...

Lessee... have I forgotten anything in this rambling bit of Ontario beer history? Ahh, yes, one small matter. Labatt bought up Lakeport Brewery, shut it down, started brewing Lakeport at their own plants and did some sort of scorched earth thing with the building, rendering it inoperable for any brewery. Or did it? As it turns out, no, not quite enough salting of the earth was done as my local boys, Nickel Brook and Toronto brewers Collective Arts leased the property last year and are putting the finishing touches on their new 50,000-square-foot collaborative Arts & Science Brewery, opening this Summer. They will need the extra capacity as Nickel Brook owner John has big plans of expanding his line in New York State and Ohio as soon as possible and the present brewery on Drury Lane in Burlington simply can't crank out that much beer. Talk about a phoenix rising from the ashes.

So let's get back to that prediction from the Brick Brewery driver. While no single grocery chain can collect more than 25% of the beer-selling licences up for grabs by the Province, the Loblaw's chain is virtually a lock for a quarter of the action and included under the Loblaws umbrella, aside from their base stores are well-known grocers such as No Frills, Fortino's and believe it or not, Shopper's Drug Marts. So will the PC line be on the shelf next to the big boys? Count on it.

Is Topless Tuesday still a go, though?
Uhhhh, I'm asking for a friend...

It's one of Loblaws' single biggest assets in terms of name recognition. And the grocery store option remains one full of potential for both Brick and the PC beers they brew. As well as, oh say, PC Memories of Bangkok Sauce and the aforementioned cookies, grocery shoppers will now have yet another PC product staring them in the face. And you have to live here to know how much weight those two single letters carry.

And one day, I'll be grocery shopping and find some lady's abandoned shopping list in my cart. If it reads, "Beer, wine and other crap like food," well, by gawd, I will know my soulmate is out there.

I realize this has been a bit of a rambling beer history lesson but there are still dozens of questions around beer reform and one-by-one, I am still trying to discover them and pass them along. We'll be back to beer next time as we look at the recent Ontario Brewing Awards where old-timer Trafalgar Brewery stunned the crowd by winning "Newcomer of the Year." I mean, this brewery has been around so long, I think Moses did the ribbon-cutting. But I got the low-down on how that happened and will be looking at dozens of other winners at the same time. But guys and dolls, that's it, that all and I am outta here!!! Until next time, I remain...