The Village Brewery sans Monster Bottling Line

As part of my recent visit to Calgary, I made some time to finally swing by Village Brewing. It was my first opportunity to see the young Calgary upstart. I had arranged to meet with co-owner Jim Button, and he suggested I come by on the Wednesday. Well what I thought was going to be a standard interview/tour/visit turned out to be something quite different. Turns out Jim had invited me to come to what they call Hump Day Social (HDS). This is a twice-monthly event where people with ideas and initiatives can come and talk to Village about how to collaborate, or mutually assist one another.

Consider HDS as a kind of incubator for the creative communities in Calgary. The day I was there a couple of women had brought some kombucha (in borrowed Village growlers) and were experimenting with blending it with Village beer. (Kombucha is a strange tea made with a particular culture of bacteria and yeast that is touted for its health benefits.) Others included a local photographer, some musicians and a group of aspiring nano-brewers. Village provides a space to talk, share ideas and brainstorm about how to get ideas off the ground through collaboration. All over beer, of course. It is not a public event per se, although the process for getting invited remains a bit fuzzy to me. Maybe Jim just invites people over like he did with me.

I will admit I came away impressed with that initiative. Village’s marketing has always been heavy on a sense of community (heck, it is their name, after all), but this was a real-time experience of how they actually try to walk the walk. It turned out to be better than the standard interview-tour. Although the brewmaster did tour me around the brewery and I got a chance to talk with Jim and a couple of the other owners about the brewery and how things are going. They are expanding quickly and report they are on target with their business plan (I didn’t see the plan, so have to take their word on that one).

Button reports that they remain committed to a Calgary-only policy, feeling they have lots of room to grow in that city and don’t want to lose that local feel. Plus this way they can avoid the pitfalls of Connect Logistics by self-distributing. Of course some leakage is occurring; they agreed to send kegs up to Edmonton for Craft Beer Market and I recently saw a Village tap handle in Medicine Hat.