Liberty Village Brewing rolls out its first large scale brew

It's been over a year since we tagged along while Liberty Village Brewing Company brewed their first commercial batch of beer, but, unless you frequent 25 Liberty, it's unlikely you've had much of a chance to sample the fledgling neighbourhood brewer's beers. That's about to change.

Today, after a year of producing only small batches of their brews and maintaining only one regular account in their neighbourhood, Liberty Village Brewing Company is rolling their beer out to bars across the city.

In order to brew a batch large enough to expand their reach to more venues, LVBC enlisted the folks at Cool Brewery, who are by now something like the area's go-to contract brewing facility, and who proved more than capable of helping Liberty meet their goals.

"The process at Cool was fantastic," says Casandra Campbell, Marketing and Sales for LVBC. "They are very professional so we felt very comfortable. [Cool Brewmasters] Adrian [Popowycz] and Vince [Marsman] were more than happy to let us be super fussy and we felt like we had total control. They provided important information about brewing efficiency and hop utilization, both of which are important for scaling up, and they also have a fantastic lab that can test just about everything."

For their first large scale batch, LVBC brewed their 504 Pale Ale, a dry-hopped American-style pale ale named for Liberty's overworked, perpetually-late streetcar. "We have seasonals in the works too but nothing confirmed yet," Campbell says. "We need to deal with our first batch before we do anything else."

Kegs will leave Cool later today and over the next few weeks you'll see Liberty Village Brewing Company's 504 Pale Ale on tap at Tequila Bookworm, PACT, Mildred's, Brass Taps, Dundas & Carlaw (formerly Lola Bar), Tallboys, Bar Hop, WVRST, and barVolo. Some of the beer is slated to go into bottles and you can expect a few more bars to start carrying LVBC brews then.

Ben Johnson also writes about beer over on Ben's Beer Blog. Follow him on twitter @Ben_T_Johnson.