Calgary’s craft brewing scene is a vast one with new beers being released constantly. But sometimes, it’s fun to take a look back and remember where the brewing industry came from.
Calgary’s newest brewery, Good Cheer Brewing, is doing just that by bringing back historical beer recipes and serving them in a historic Calgary building.
“I’m trying to create what’s really a museum exhibit you can taste,” says Nathan Vadeboncoeur, founder of Good Cheer Brewing. “I want to be able to engage people with the past by not only creating an environment that feels like an old-school pub and having these old-school beers, but also create stories that go with it.”
As a history buff, Vadeboncoeur has always had a penchant for those stories. Good Cheer is named after The Order of Good Cheer, a sort of social club created by explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1606 as a way to boost morale through Canada’s long winters. Each week, one person in the order would get the week off and be tasked with planning a party for the rest of the crew. Good Cheer Brewing continues that tradition of bringing people together around drinks, food and good times.
Located in the historic Ramsay Design Centre, Good Cheer’s interior feels like a turn-of-the-century pub. Much of the wood used in the space was reclaimed from the Mount Royal home of a former Canadian Pacific Railway president. The chandeliers above the bar are also sourced from the same home.
The menu’s core beers range from a Scandinavian beer based on a recipe from 920, to an Irish stout based on a 1959 recipe, to a West Coast IPA that recreates a 1990 recipe that brought back the now extremely popular style from extinction. Each beer has its own unique story (the staff are very knowledgeable on their histories), and all are recreated as faithfully as possible.
That said, Vadeboncoeur is also a bit of a beer scientist who scours historical records and works on new experiments to bring to the brewery.
“We’re doing this kind of beer archeology,” says Vadeboncoeur. “When we’re recreating old beers, we have to try to come up with custom malts and a lot of unusual things. So our brewing process, as we get started, is a lot of experimentation — we make a beer, see what it’s like, and then we have to keep tweaking it.”
The beer menu can be paired with a few European bar snacks and sandwiches like Bavarian soft pretzels, a Dutch gouda and ham sandwich, a traditional Icelandic hot dog called a pylsa and a Scandinavian beef hand pie.
If you’re looking for more information on the history of beer, Vadeboncoeur also hosts a podcast called Brewing Society, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
1220 20 Ave. S.E., goodcheer.beer
