Just a few weeks before the pandemic hit Alberta in March of 2020, the fourth-oldest brewer in our fair province changed hands. This was shortly after the Calgary-based Wild Rose Brewery was acquired by megabrewer Sleeman Brewing, followed by Banded Peak Brewing being acquired by Labatt.
At the time, I was predicting that Edmonton’s Alley Kat Brewing would be the next to be swallowed up by a megabrewer looking to dip a toe into the craft brewing segment of the market. Alley Kat did indeed change hands, not entirely unsurprisingly, as the husband-and-wife team at the helm had been operating the brewery for 25 years, and were ready for a well-deserved retirement.
Fortunately, rather than being absorbed by a multinational conglomerate, Edmonton’s pride-and-joy craft brewery was acquired by a duo of local accountants turned entrepreneurs, who quickly transitioned from large organizations where they crunched spreadsheets all day, to small business owners where they still balance the books, but also handle everything else from sales to chief bottle washers.
When the keys to the brewery were handed over in February of 2020, it was unthinkable that the entire hospitality industry would shut down just a month later, and with most of Alley Kat’s business being in keg accounts at restaurants and bars, much of the cash flow dried up immediately. Like all the other craft brewers in Alberta, Alley Kat struggled to retool their production lines to focus on canning for retail sales, both via home delivery and at your local bottle shop.
Fortunately, Alley Kat had just shifted their packaging from 650mL glass bottles to a modern aluminum canning line, mere weeks before the pandemic hit, so were lucky enough to be able to quickly ramp up the switch from kegging to canning, making them in much better shape than many of their peers who could only offer growler fills. While the canning line was only sized to package a small portion of Alley Kat’s total production, it ran double shifts to replace the lost market for kegging, with the new owners burning the midnight oil running the canning line on the night shift.
It has now been two full years, and Alley Kat remains largely the same, with their core beers unchanged, although the new owners have tweaked the artwork on the cans, as well as introduced a rotating lineup of one-off and seasonals with adventurous and experimental styles that have brought the beer geeks to their taproom door.
Alley Kat is well known and loved in our local beer industry, and was a pioneer of Alberta craft beer, opening their doors in Edmonton way back in 1995. Due to their long history, the employees from Alley Kat have spread far and wide throughout Alberta and beyond, moving up to head brewers at other facilities, or even starting up new breweries of their own.
The core lineup has the usual suspects with broad market appeal, including a Pale Ale, Brown Ale, a light Kölsch-styled easy drinker, and a cloud New England styled IPA. In addition to these traditional core beers, Alley Kat is famous for their fruit-infused offerings, including a Grapefruit Wheat Ale and their legendary Aprikat, loved by beer fans as the first beer flavoured with apricot in Alberta, and has remained the best-seller at Alley Kat for the past 25 years.
I have enjoyed countless Aprikat Ales over the years, usually on sunny patios where the refreshing taste of a fruit beer is most appreciated. Despite my long acquaintance with Aprikat, my favourite sunny patio beer has recently switched to the Main Squeeze Grapefruit Ale.
Both the Aprikat and Main Squeeze ales start with a wheat beer as the base, followed by the fruit addition later in the brewing process. The Main Squeeze uses ruby grapefruit that are squeezed into the brew, using about 75 grapefruits per batch.
This makes the Main Squeeze Grapefruit Ale vaguely similar in flavour to the Radler style, which blends a light beer with lemonade or grapefruit juice. Unlike a typical Radler that weighs in around 3% ABV, the Main Squeeze is a full strength 5% ale, with a sturdy bitterness from a generous hop bill, as well as flavour extraction from the grapefruit rinds. This makes for a perfect pairing with a sunny patio, or outdoor pursuits like mowing or cycling. Try one today!
