Local brew spills over

The Howe Sound Brew Pub is going to serve its beer in a new Vancouver establishment – The Devil’s Elbow Ale and Whiskey House. 

David Fenn, co- owner of Howe Sound Brewing Company, is one of four investors in the new business scheduled to open October 1 on Beatty Street near Roger’s Arena. The venue previously housed Chambar, a Belgian beer bar. 

Alongside a couple of hundred whiskeys, the new establishment will have 20-some taps, 90 per cent of which will pour Howe Sound beers. 

Renovations began August 10 and when everything is complete there will be about 175 seats.

“It’s a pretty good facility – beautiful wood and brick in the space already, so it really works with our theme. It’ll have a lot of Howe Sound representation, but it’ll have its own stamp for sure,” said Fenn. 

“I guess there was a feeling from our point of view here at the brew pub, given that we’re distributing down in the city quite a bit and elsewhere as well, is that it would be nice to just extend the Howe Sound name a little bit more and make it easier for people in Vancouver to find our products all in one spot.” 

Fenn says he’s thought about the idea for the past four or five years, but a situation like this, where a brewery can sell its beer at a pub that it owns in a location different from the brewery, only became possible within the past few months.

The provincial government is in the process of updating B.C.’s liquor laws in accordance with 73 recommendations from the Liquor Policy Review which concluded earlier this year. 

One such recommendation that has been adopted is, “Individual establishments that are part of a
larger company should be able to transfer small amounts of liquor between locations.” 

“What that originated from was so that one huge brewery wouldn’t own all the bars and pubs... comes from England originally,” notes Fenn. 

“What this new law allows for in British Columbia is that if you’re a brewery you’re allowed to own three locations off-site.”