Wait, what’s that you say? It’s not abuzz? In fact, no one seems to be taking much note at all?
Can’t say I’m that surprised, really. Granville has for years been owned by Andrew Peller Limited (formerly Andres Wines), a major Canadian wine maker with but a little toe in the beer game. Molson is seeing some success with Creemore and would like to see expanded west coast distribution of its brands, even though the jury is well out on how a blatantly Ontario brand will fare outside the province. (Just as there is some question as to how such evidently Vancouver-centric brands will play in Ontario, if Molson decides to bring the Granville line-up east.) So the marriage makes a lot of sense from a structural perspective.
Far more interesting is word from the Canadian Beer News blog yesterday of a collaborative brew being planned at Canmore, Alberta’s Grizzly Paw Brewing. You can get the details over here, but basically, representatives from each of the province’s craft brewers will be getting together to brew a Dark Rye India Pale Ale (whatever that is…) with the batch being split three kegs apiece and all the proceeds going to support each individual brewery’s charity of choice.
This is the kind of initiative it would be great to see more of, and since Canada Malting is playing a prominent role by donating the ingredients, perhaps we will.
