If you’ve been brewing craft beer for 20 years, and are looking for a new but related challenge, opening an artisanal distillery is a logical move. If you can build the distillery just two doors down from the brewery, all the better.
The Yaletown Distilling Company was launched on December 5, 2013 to coincide with Repeal Day, which marks the end of US prohibition in 1933. It’s part of the Mark James Group company of craft brewery restaurants, and a sister property of Yaletown Brewing Company, the iconic Vancouver brewpub that’s adjacent to the distillery.
Head distiller Tariq Khan is well known in craft beer circles, having honed his skills as head brewer at Big Ridge Brewpub in Surrey before taking over at Yaletown Brewing. Adding vodka, gin and whisky to his repertoire required some new learning, but Tariq benefits from the fact that the initial steps in the distilling process are the same as for the brewing process. For his vodka, he starts with British Columbian two-row malted barley from the Peace River Valley and Vanderhoof. The barley grain is milled and boiled into a wort in the brewhouse, and then piped over to the distillery meters away, where it sits in fermentation tanks prior to being distilled — essentially boiling the liquid to reduce the water and correspondingly increase the alcohol and flavour.
