Canada & USA: Canadian brewery aims to reach US market

Central City Brewers + Distillers president Darryll Frost has spent most of his 49 years in pubs. His parents owned one. Today, he makes beer that is served from coast to coast and down to the Mexican border, Vancouver Sun reported on December 5.

"This place was built for export," he said of the recently opened 65,000-square-foot, $15.5-million facility the City of Surrey built on a two-hectare site. Leasing it for 20 years, Frost installed $11 million worth of plant, including a $6-million automatic line to output 250 bottles or cans of Red Racer and other Central City brands per minute. The plant will produce 8,000 hectolitres this year, 25,000 in 2014, and can handle 100,000 Frost said.

Half of the 2014 output will likely go to the US and a quarter each to BC and the rest of Canada, Frost said.
Meanwhile, there's room to grow.

He has first dibs on an adjacent hectare that could house "an enormous barrel room." That would be for far more than the 20,000 litres of whisky Central City has produced, with a 500-litre first batch of vodka due in January and gin to follow. He hopes the firm's vodka-infused Betty's coolers will echo the continental success Anthony von Mandl's Mike's Hard Lemonade.

As for the science of brewing, Simon Fraser University recently developed such a course in conjunction with Frost's 10-yearold, 300-seat brew pub that is its neighbour in the Central City district. Frost set up that operation by recruiting 30 investors at $30,000 each.

06 December, 2013