Lyle Thorsen’s wife was thrilled when he told her he wanted to open a brewery. Many partners might be nervous that he was thinking of quitting his lucrative job in the oil patch or was planning to place a second mortgage on their home to make it happen. Thorsen’s wife knew better. “She wanted me out of the house more,” he says. “I was always brewing in the house and she hated it. My daughters always cleared out when they smelled the mash.” He says she loved the idea of moving the brewery to the shop on their acreage.

Part of his wife’s response was due to the unique nature of Thorsen’s project. He wasn’t planning a full-sized commercial brewery requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars to get up and running. His plan was what he calls “a hobby business” where the beer is serious but the rest is about balance. The result is Rocky View Brewing Company, which opened its doors a few weeks ago.

Thorsen is an engineer actively employed in the oil sector. He has been a homebrewer for a long time. “I got into homebrewing in university, just to keep cost of beer down.” When family and career came along he dropped the hobby, but picked it back up a couple years ago, once the kids were a bit older. This time he was more serious about it and really applied himself. “It was about from scratch, seeing what I could do. I would be brave enough to take my wares to parties and it was well received.”

That got him thinking. Thorsen has both an Engineering degree and an MBA, meaning he combines the technical curiousity with an acute business sense. “I have always had something of a business hat,” he says. “I don’t want to be afraid to try something new. I thought ‘why not give it a shot?'”

He did some math and realized that if he built his brewery on his property, which is located outside Cochrane officially in environs of a tiny town called Bearspaw in Rocky View County, he could make it work. “It was a good fit. It was something I was doing anyway – brewing every couple weeks – and so I thought I would just size it up a bit and keep it at home”.

And that is basically what he did. He had been brewing on an unusual single vessel, electric-fired set-up from a company called BrewHa. They had just released a 5BBL version of their system, which essentially allows the brewer to mash, sparge, boil, and ferment in the same vessel. Thorsen decided to simply buy that new nano-sized version and away he went. “I know it is unconventional, but I already understood how the system worked,” which reduced the learning curve, he notes. The limitation to the system is that he can only have one beer on the go at a time (since his fermenter is also his bright tank – not to mention his mash tun), but for now that works for him. “I can always add more vessels down the road if I want to double batch or something.”

He brewed his first batch in September and has been consistently brewing every second weekend since. With his job he gets every second Friday off as time-in-lieu. “Those weekends I brew. I keg Friday and get ready to brew Saturday or Sunday, depending on what is happening that weekend.”

As part of his starting modest mantra, Thorsen is starting with three core beer: a Blonde Ale, An Amber Ale and an IPA. “I will rotate some seasonals in and out as time goes along.”

Photo courtesy canadianbeernews.com

The vision for the beer is quality but is also comfortable. “I like to brew beer that is approachable to most people. My IPA is not crazy hop explosion. It is toned down. People can drink it all night if they want.” He sees the blonde ale as a “gateway beer that gets people off the macro-brews” and he personally really likes ambers as they have “more flavours but not hoppy – something people can enjoy.”

He is packaging in a combination of kegs and 650-ml bottles, although he is learning kegs might be more economical in the short term. “Bottling time is intensive.” He started with a homebrew-style Blichmann beer gun (I won one of those) which is a VERY inefficient way to fill 600-litre of bottles. Thorsen now hwas a small automated filler, but even then bottling can take hours. He has learned to “concentrate more on getting on some taps and kegs sales,” to free up valuable time. However on the flipside he is now learning that getting tap accounts can be a time-consuming process in its own rights.

But Thorsen sees all of this as teaching moments. He knows he is a privileged position of having time to learn the industry and what works. He is keeping his day job and because his brewery is on his property he has flexibility. “Idon’t have a lot of overhead. I don’t have to force things out to pay landlord or pay back an investment in a big system.”

Instead he gets to do what any homebrewer dreams of. “I am building a business out of my passion. I just want to do things right.” Thorsen has modest expectations. “I don’t need to reach too far. I am fine with being available in very select stores and a few taps. It is all I can do, really.”

The name is obvious. The brewery is located in Rocky View County, but for Thorsen it has a bit more meaning than that. “I love the mountains. It is one of the things I appreciate about Calgary,” he notes.”We have a view of the mountains from the house/brewery and that seemed to fit. We wanted something that was Calgary and regional and tied into the geographical and geological sense of place.”

Given his in-the-moment attitude it is not surprising Thorsen doesn’t really have an answer for where he wants the brewery  to be in five years. “I want continue to have some fun, that is what it is about,” he opines. “I enjoyed homebrewing and initially this has been great.” He just wants to keep doing it.