INNISFAIL – Finding a locally brewed pint of beer in Innisfail will soon get easier with the introduction of new microbreweries.
Dark Woods Brewery is getting ready to open in a small space where the owners can brew and offer off-sales, including bottle and growler fills, with plans to expand to a larger facility in the spring.
"Me and my brother started brewing about two years ago,” said Nick Bell, one of the creators of Dark Woods Brewery. He and twin brother Scott have a shared passion for drinking beer, which turned into an interest in brewing it.
"We’ve been getting some pretty good feedback,” Nick said. So they’ve decided to launch it into a business. Microbreweries have been popping up all over Alberta in the past few years.
Bell said they hope to be up and running in their temporary space, behind NAPA Auto Parts on 47th Avenue and 50th Street, and accessed by the west rear access door, in a month or so. The approvals are already in place to sell by the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission, and the brothers have started approaching local watering holes to gauge interest in having some local beer on tap.
There’s no room for a tasting room at the small space, and there are already plans approved by the town for a bigger facility with a taproom, which the Bells hope to have set up in the spring.
They hope to create beers that are "as much 100 per cent Alberta beer as possible,” Nick said. That includes ingredients from nearby start-up hops producers in Bowden, some malt from Red Shed Malting near Penhold and other provincial ingredients.
An exception may be the yeast, which Nick said they may need to go outside of the province for.
There will be four different beers ready to try when Dark Woods Brewery officially opens for business: a blonde, an amber, a stout and a wheat beer, Nick said. A grand opening will soon be in the works.
Meanwhile, it appears another microbrewery could be opening soon based on applications coming to town council and the town’s Municipal Planning Commission (MPC).
At the Jan. 8 town council meeting, council added microbrewery as a discretionary use to the west side industrial land zone, clearing the way for a development permit application to be heard by the planning commission.
The discretionary use is specific to the parcel of land currently proposed to host the microbrewery in the industrial park.
Documents provided to council as part of the report show the microbrewery, if it goes ahead, would be located at the corner of Highway 54 and 42nd Street, with the front being along 61st Avenue, putting it near the entrance to the industrial park.
Meghan Jenkins, who works in development services for the town, said the development permit application will be heard by the Municipal Planning Commission on Jan. 16.
Mayor Jim Romane said the location is a good one to have some commercial exposure, and means people won’t have to drive through the industrial park trying to find it.
"It was a sensible decision, I thought,” Romane said.
Nick Bell
"Me and my brother started brewing about two years ago. We've been getting some pretty good feedback."
