If the craft-beer movement in B.C. had any sort of hub or base of operations, it would be found on the fringes of Gastown, housed in a heritage building hemmed in between Alexander Street and the rumbling railcars of the Canadian Pacific freight line near Vancouver’s harbour.
The Alibi Room has become synonymous with craft beer in all of its guises, hunting down and presenting to the public rare and wonderful brews from our province and way beyond. As such, this “modern tavern” has become something of a home from home for people who care about beer – from the casual post-work tippler to the brewers themselves – with its 25 taps and three cask engines on constant rotation, and in constant use.
Witness the recent party thrown at the Alibi to celebrate its 200th beer list: The queue to get in stretched for a block down Alexander Street ahead of doors opening at 5 p.m., all in a bid to try an array of rare and one-off casks assembled by the venue’s owner Nigel Springthorpe. Such dedicated line-ups are real testament to the growing popularity of craft beer in B.C. – and recognition of the Alibi Room’s role in that trend.
Thinking up a better Alibi
With his sister-in-law, Raya Audet, Springthorpe in 2006 took over the running of what was then a fairly run-of-the-mill operation.“I’d been here working with my hands tied thinking about what it could be, what it probably should be and never really given the opportunity to do it,” says Springthorpe, pre-opening hours at the Alibi, about his days as an employee. So, when the opportunity arose, “we decided to take the plunge ourselves.”
It never appeared to be a goal to become the province’s mecca for craft beer – until some nearby competition opened up and got Springthorpe thinking.
“I would definitely give a hat tip to Six Acres at this juncture,” Springthorpe says.
“We just had this idea we were going to change the basics, just to keep us ticking over. We were experimenting with some interesting bottle options, small esoteric choices that might work.
“Then these guys open and they have a beautiful place, it’s well thought-out, super-comfortable, really good people doing a really good job of having this import stuff from all over the world.
“And we were like, OK, we’ve got to take a different approach here. And I thought, what if we can do the local stuff? And I started to research, what are at the options here, not just breweries but brewpubs as well.”
Springthorpe got on the phone to some local microbreweries, but was initially rebuffed by brewers worried about how their product would be presented. It would take him a while to build trust that, yes, the beer would be stored, tapped and poured correctly.
In the meantime, Springthorpe was doing research in some private liquor stores and had a minor epiphany at Brewery Creek on Main Street.
“They were starting to get all these nice American beers,” he explains. “Brooklyn, that was the first one for me that I thought, ‘Wow, I’ll check that out.’ I picked up a Brooklyn lager. It was really differently presented. It’s a really different flavour experience from local lager.”
After some negotiation, the Alibi Room set up the first account in Vancouver for the lager from the New York brewery.
“It was expensive,” says Springthorpe. “But we put it on and people were mad for it. It was $2, $2.50 more for a pint or sleeve, but it was selling well. It definitely made me see there was something to be filled there.”
Springthorpe renewed his efforts to talk round local brewers and was soon stocking some of their bottled product. Before long, he got his first yes in a keg of local beer.
“I went back and started to be really persistent with the local guys and just started turning up on people’s doorstep,” he says.
“What we have here is a very tight-knit brewing community . . . So as soon as I started getting a couple of people saying yes – and I never went to the management or ownership, it was always to the brewer – then other guys started to say yes.”
Underlining the Alibi Room’s role in craft beer’s rise in B.C. is the fact that one of those brewers in the affirmative was a certain Gary Lohin of Central City in Surrey, who put faith in Springthorpe to sell some of a little-known beer called Red Racer IPA.
“We were the first place to serve Red Racer IPA,” Springthorpe proudly states of the beer now regarded across the continent as one of the benchmarks of the West Coast IPA style.
“I’m the only guy who still texts Gary Lohin, he’s the guy I do my orders with . . . We were the first ones that found him, we asked him, ‘this is what we’re doing, can we carry some of your product?’ Now those guys, it’s just exploded.”
For Springthorpe and his staff, many of whom he’s worked with for years, moving the Alibi Room’s focus to craft beer has been a personal journey and an education as well as a business model.
“It’s not just me but all the guys here, we’ve grown in our tastes. We’ve navigated through all the crappy stuff . . . It wasn’t like we decided to do it and the next day we had the 28 best beers in B.C. There’s an absolute path of how we got to the selection we do today.”
It’s a path that’s been documented on Springthorpe’s now famous beer lists of what’s on offer at any given time at the Alibi.
“There’s some bits and bobs in the office of what I was pouring in the early days and I look at it and I think, really?” wonders Springthorpe about some of his early draft choices.
Nigel Springthorpe mans the Alibi barMore beer!
But as if 25 kegs and three casks weren’t enough, the Alibi is now creating even more room for beer.Springthorpe is visibly excited by the prospect of bringing in some high-calibre European product on draft, not least from Scotland’s Brewdog, the current wee bams (that’s Scottish for enfants terrible) of the brewing world. Their whisky-cask aged Paradox stout and highly hopped Hardcore IPA look pretty certain to arrive on tap at the Alibi come the spring, alongside an IPA tripel from Belgian brewer Chouffe.
“I’ve got some really exciting leads on some fantastic European product,” says Springthorpe. “It’s a new thing for us to have European stuff on tap.”
Not that we should be worried that Springthorpe is turning his back on B.C.
His intention is to hunt down the epitome of each beer style and have that beer on draft – and while a good portion of these can be found in the province, there are some unique flavours that cannot be replicated in B.C., even if it’s due to the hardness of the water.
And besides, the province will still have excellent representation in the Alibi Room’s new beer cellar, which will feature aged strong brews. The idea is that, with every style represented on tap, the aging cellar will replace the now-defunct bottle list.
“The cellar is definitely not something that’s done by many,” says Springthorpe. “Right now, I have a few vintages of barley wine where I have three years of them so you can now do a vertical tasting . . . It’s really very much a kind of a connoisseurs’ bottle list.
“If you just want to have a lager or a pilsner, I’m really going to try to have the best quality option in that genre available on tap, and it’s going to be a really meticulously thought out list. So we’re not alienating anybody or excluding anybody.”
Least of all the good brewers of B.C.
“We’re only as good as what is being produced and I think there’s definitely something happening in the province,” says Springthorpe of the burgeoning craft-beer scene.
“Part of it is these guys are not doing anything different what they have been for years. People just understand the product more . . . I just see it over and over. People are really getting more sophisticated and starting to look for more interesting things.
“And our guys are responding in the right way. They’ve got the skill set and the repertoire of beers to put the stuff out there.”
Keeping it social
Going hand in hand with the Alibi Room’s dedication to good beer is spreading awareness and enthusiasm for good beer. Springthorpe seems intent on making beer drinking an involved, social experience, as opposed to the faceless megabranded beers brewed by a machine in a giant factory somewhere far away.“Here, we’re very much interested in the process and what it means as well as how it tastes, so when someone asks you, ‘What am I tasting here?,’ you can actually explain it to them,” says Springthorpe.”It just gives them a different experience and a different respect for the product.
“[Beer] is a very honest product. There’s no nonsense surrounding it. It’s always been the attraction to wanting to go down this path.
“Certainly, what I find with beer is that it’s about nothing else than what’s inside the bottle or can or keg. And that must have a bit of reflection on the artisans who are involved in the process too.
“And the other thing here is, on the beer list, if I get a speciality or one-o ff, it’s the brewer’s name that goes on. And it’s a real pleasure for me to hear people because I know these guys personally. For me to have a customer ordering a ‘Conrad’s’ or an ‘Ian’s’ or a ‘Tariq’s’ or a ‘Gary’s’ – it’s supercool.
“But it’s even more cool when a brewer comes in and says. ‘I’ll try one of Ian’s or Conrad’s’.
“It’s something we’ve always done. It gives people this fantastic extra connection to the product, it makes you think about another step of what you’re putting in your body or what you’re tasting. It’s a small thing but I think it’s a really nice touch for people.
“People ask where is Conrad from and it opens a dialogue between the server and the customer . . . It’s really, really satisfying to see people connect to the product in that way.”
Keeping it fresh
If converting people person by person is what it’ll take to give craft beer more prominence, so be it. But besides more individuals turning to craft beer, along with a growing number of pubs, Springthorpe foresees a change in high-end restaurants that generally offer bland beer selections.“It used to be, you go to a restaurant, a good restaurant. They have an amzing menu, a creative cocktail list, a well thought out wine list . . . and two shitty beers on tap. And it’s like, how does one thing not reflect the other? How does that make any sense?
“. . . So what I see as a major change is that I’ve had GMs or bar managers of many great places sit at this bar and ask what’s out there, I’m thinking of shaking things up. So that s a big shift,” says Springthorpe, who’s keen to emphasize that food is a big component of the Alibi Room too, with ex-Habit Lounge chef Greg Armstrong’s kitchen dishing out interesting, well-sourced plates, from free-run chicken wings and salads to curries and bison cheese steak sandwiches.
And just as important as fresh beer and fresh food is a fresh experience.
“I’ve never wanted to rest on our laurels here,” says Springthorpe. “It gets f--king boring coming to the same place, doing the same thing. I have to keep it dynamic, changing, for my own sanity. Sometimes I’m excited to open that door at five o’clock and I’m thinking, ‘We’ve got this beer, that beer, people are going to love this.’”
“And that’s a big driving force behind this latest expansion. We’re peaking out. There’s times when we can’t really get much busier.
“It’s not about just dollars, it’s about providing choices for people . . . The next couple of months, with what’s coming in here, and what we’re going to allow to come in, it’s really exciting.
“Vancouverites are going to have a world-class beer-focused restaurant on their doorstep.”
This is one Alibi you’re going to need.
jzeschky@theprovince.com
twitter.com/jantweats
Beer to make Room for
Nigel Springthorpe’s favourite B.C. brews include:Swans Buckerfields IPA: “On cask, it’s second to none. It’s a beautiful beer.”
Driftwood Old Cellar Dweller barley wine: “On 200th beer list night we had the only cask in existence. Just poetry in motion. An amazing, amazing, amazing beer. I can’t say enough. Just fantastic.”
Yaletown Oud Bruin sour brown ale: “Just completely unique . . . super authentic. Just this incredible beer that most people don’t know exists. I’ve been in the brewpub and they don’t know it exists.”
Central City Red Racer IPA: “That’s the one you have a six pack of in the fridge, always. It’s one thing to produce something that blows somebody’s face off first time they try it and its amazing, but it’s another thing to produce something that people go back to and keep going back to, your welcome-home beer.”
Steamworks Espresso Stout: “Amazing.”
Howe Sound Pothole Filler imperial stout: “Hands down my favourite product that they produce. I kept a keg of that in my cellar last year. I’ve been experimenting aging a few keg beers . . . dude, it was so good.”
