E-Malt.com News article: Canada, BC: Dageraad Brewing to start offering its Belgian-style beers later in May

This story, like many others, begins overseas.

A man travelled to Belgium to meet up with some friends he had met earlier while adventuring around Laos. When he arrived in Antwerp, his friends took him to Dageraadplaats, a square made up of cafés and tables full of people drinking Belgian beer.

This is where the man got hooked on the enticing aromas and flavours of Belgian beer.

The man is Ben Coli, and soon he will be sharing his love of Belgian beer with consumers throughout Burnaby and the Lower Mainland when his new brewery, Dageraad Brewery, produces its first batch of brew, Burnaby Now reported on May 8.

Coli began his venture into the brewing world with a friend and a secondhand home-brewing kit they bought off Craigslist. After dabbling in a few different varieties of beer, Coli tried his hand at crafting a Belgian-style brew.

“I had some really good luck with my first couple of Belgian-style batches and got hooked on brewing them,” he said. “It’s just something in the complexity and just diversity of Belgian beer.”

Beer in Belgium is known for its unique ingredients. Rather than stick with the traditional barley, hops, water and yeast, Belgians often incorporate other, seemingly random, ingredients such as oats, wheat, caramelized sugar, coriander, aniseed or thyme, to create a refreshing, light taste.

When Coli began brewing his own Belgian beer, he said he would start by finding a beer he enjoyed and go from there.

“Usually when I start off brewing a beer like this I say, ‘I want it to be like this beer but,’ and I make it a little different and make my own take on it,” he said.

Dageraad Brewing is four years in the making. Named after the Flemish word for sunrise and Dageraadplaats, the place where Coli developed his passion for Belgian beer, the new brewery is located in a small industrial building near the Production Way SkyTrain station in Burnaby. Its humble location is a testament to Dageraad’s beginning – what began as a home brew has now taken the next step towards a full-scale brewery.

With the grand opening and launch of Dageraad’s first batch still several weeks away, Coli and his team are working to perfect the art of Belgian beer on a larger scale than they’re used to.

But compared to other breweries around the Lower Mainland, Dageraad is relatively small in scale, and that’s how Coli likes it. In order to perfect the brew, it’s best to keep it small, he said.

“To keep things simple and to concentrate on brewing things well rather than just brewing a lot of different beers to make sure that whatever we’re doing, we’ve mastered,” Coli added.

With an ever-growing local interest in craft beer and a recent move towards more locally made products, this is the perfect time to introduce the population to Belgian beer, Coli said.

“We can get good Belgian beer here, but it tends to be pretty expensive, and it’s kind of hard to find. So we’re looking at doing it locally and giving consumers here fresh, Belgian-style beer,” he said.

Coli credited the evolution of both breweries and consumers with the shift towards new and exciting flavours including Belgian-style beer.

“I think that B.C.’s beer market is ready for it,” he said. “As the palettes develop, the brewers develop, and I think this (Dageraad) is the next step.”

There are already some breweries in the Lower Mainland making Belgian-style beer, but none is solely dedicated to its production like Dageraad.

“We’re taking it to the next step. We’re going to do things that are a little more Belgian, a little bit less accessible but definitely nothing that should chase anyone off,” he said. “A lot of consumers I think are associating craft beers as being that really bitter thing or being that really black inky stout, and I love those beers, but we’re not doing that at all.”

Coli and his team are working on two different types of Belgian beer, amber-style ale and blonde ale.

“There’s not going to be any massive bitterness to it so when you taste it you’re going to get a lot of fruity flavours and spicy flavours … which is going to make it pair really well with food,” he said.

Dageraad Brewing hopes to launch its first batch of Belgian-style beer by May 24. After that consumers will be able to find the local Burnaby brew in select stores across the Lower Mainland and at several restaurants, including the Tangent Café on Commercial Drive in Vancouver.


09 May, 2014