After 16 months of back and forth with the City of Burnaby, Dageraad Brewing is finally on the cusp of opening its new tasting room.
Construction is currently underway at the Burnaby-based brewery to convert the industrial unit next door into a 40-seat lounge, which will include balcony seating and two long tables on the main floor. The space is similar to what Dageraad already uses, but its cold cement walls are being filled in with drywall; its heavy metal door will be replaced with glass; and two holes have been cut into the roof and will be made into skylights.
The intention is to transform the space into a beer cathedral, Ben Coli told the NOWduring a recent visit.
But getting to the point where they could actually start renovating the space took much longer than Coli had anticipated.
“We had difficulty with permitting. The City of Burnaby is a) very, very busy with all the construction going on in Burnaby but b) kind of difficult to deal with. We did not have a happy time. It took us more than a year, basically from our first conversation to them actually getting the green light,” he said.
“But that’s all behind us now. We are fully under construction and as long as licencing with the province goes OK, we should be opening our new tasting room, hopefully, in April.”
And it’s welcomed news, according to Coli.
The brewery lost 10 pallets of its specialty 10 Degrees beer in January, which was worth about $40,000 to $50,000 at wholesale, he said.
The culprit? The brewery’s new warm room, where they bottle condition all their beers – a process unique to Dageraad that involves storing the beer in a warm room so it can re-ferment inside the bottle and become carbonated. (Most breweries add CO2, instead.)
“The new warm room was a lot taller than the old one, and we had some fans in there to circulate the air, but they were not sufficient, and it got way hotter at the top of the room than at the bottom, and it basically cooked everything at the top of the room,” Coli explained.
“We had to throw away like 600 dozen bottles of beer, which for a brewery of our size, is just friggin’ terrible.”
When news got out about what happened, other brewers asked how they could help, while restaurant owners offered tap space for Dageraad or placed large orders to try and help with cash flow.
“It was really encouraging to see. It really actually helps take the sting out of losing all that beer,” he said.
Despite the hardship, Coli hasn’t let it stop him from doing what he loves – brewing beer.
Dageraad recently teamed up with Steamworks, also based in Burnaby, to produce East of East Van, a saison brewed with black lime and white pepper, and New Westminster brewer Steel & Oak to produce an American IPA dubbed the Suburbs.
Dageraad Brewing is located at 114-3191 Thunderbird Cres., near the Production Way SkyTrain station.
