In the explosion that has been the Alberta beer scene in the last four years, Edmonton has been a bit of a library nook, i.e., rather quiet. While Calgary exploded with dozens of new breweries, Edmonton picked up one or two a year.

That may be changing, finally.

2019 has been good for the Edmonton beer scene. In the early part of the year, three new breweries opened their doors – SYC Brewing, Odd Company Brewing and Omen Brewing. Now in the latter half of the year, three more have welcomed customers, with possibly one more to come. The summer saw The Growlery get started and the fall witnessed the much delayed launch of Polar Park Brewing. I anticipate we will see the official opening of the Monolith by Blind Enthusiasm before the calendar flips over.

The first three had the misfortune (from the perspective of me and my self-centred interests) of opening before I had returned from my hiatus. But the last two waited just long enough to allow me to offer up a profile on my CBC Radioactive column. Which I happily did.

And my friends at the CBC have posted online. You can hear The Growlery profile here, and the Polar Park profile here. I did a post on the Growlery profile earlier (here), but thought the contrast on the two breweries was interesting so decided to take another swipe at it.

Since you can listen to the profiles yourself, I won’t repeat what I talked about on the radio, which mostly consists of the brewery’s backstory, vision and a tasting of one of their beer.

Instead here I want to briefly contrast the two new breweries, as they are quite different in their approach, branding and business strategy.

The Growlery is designed to be small and local. They are taproom focused and are angling on the eventual success of the Blatchford Lands development (revitalizing the old Municipal Airport lands). For the moment they are hoping to build a loyal following of people coming by the slightly-out-of-the-way taproom. It is a close-knit operation, owned by two friends and only a couple of employees. Notably, they are already on their second brewmaster in a few short months. By their own admission their early batches needed some tweaking to reach the flavours they are looking for – and I think the new brewmaster is part of that tweaking process. The taproom is spare but cozy with (for the moment) an unfortunate view of a construction site. It feels like a place where you could feel like a regular quite quickly.

In contrast Polar Park is expansive and ambitious. Five years in the making they finally opened their doors last month (after missing 20 projected opening dates). The space is impressive – an historic building that housed longtime Edmonton iconic bakery Bee Bell – which they have done up in a big way. Two floors (the second floor is an event space) and a full sized restaurant and kitchen, they are aiming to be a full-service experience. The brewhouse is also historic, built in Germany in 1938 (plus it was one of the reasons for the multiple delays).

Polar Park has 24 different investors and they have an ambitious vision of multiple locations in the coming years. They see themselves as a destination both for casual beer consumers and special events.

In both cases the beer is in flux, which is not unusual for a brand new brewery. Both seem to want to stay traditional and accessible and aren’t playing with more experimental or edgy styles and techniques.

The different nature of these two new breweries demonstrates that Alberta, and Edmonton specifically, is developing a diversity of beer business models and approaches. A growing industry has room for many types of breweries. Polar Park and The Growlery couldn’t really be farther apart in their approach.

Which approach will prove to be more effective remains to be seen.