What’s on Tap? – Community, Creativity & Craft at Inner City Brewing

Meghanne Uptigrove

Published

4 years ago

4 minute read

Located in the heart of Calgary’s colorful Beltline district, Inner City Brewing recently celebrated two years of bringing great brews and good times to Calgary’s downtown!

Originally founded by 5 friends in 2018 with just 8 beers on tap, it has been a busy two years of innovation and expansion for Inner City. The brewery now features a combination of 20 core and rotating taps available year round, and has brewed over 60 beers in total – an unprecedented number in such a short amount of time. The taproom also includes a full service kitchen with a high-quality comfort food menu (check out the nacho in a bag!).

Inner City Brewing celebrates the life of the city through the creation of brews that are as unique and exciting as the city itself. “We love the vibrancy and the connections,” says Doug Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of Inner City Brewing, “it’s all the weird and wonderful interactions that make the inner city.”

Each Inner City can is dedicated to a specific destination around the world, using artistic map renderings to highlight the area of inspiration for each beer and style. “No map or intersection is exactly alike,” says Doug, “and neither are our beers.” The colorful artistry of Inner City products makes them easy to spot on the liquor store shelf lineup, with unique designs such as “Bridgelandia”, a core beer featuring a map of Calgary, and “Brickworks”, an English Dark Mild Ale that features the map of Manchester, UK.

Located in a restored 1940’s building on 11 Ave’s 800 block, Inner City’s clean industrial taproom is built of concrete and steel, with massive bay windows that flood the space with Alberta sunshine all year round.

Visitors can watch the hustle of 11th from the patio or peer into the massive on-site brewery adjacent to the taproom, where Inner City Head Brewer Eli Horne is constantly working on the next best thing. With 20 taps featuring everything from crisp lagers to oatmeal stouts, Inner City shares their love of craft beer with the community by brewing something for everyone. “Beer is much more versatile in flavor and variety than people realize,” says Doug, “especially with our main brewery and pilot brewery systems, the sky’s the limit.”

The Inner City taproom is home to two custom-built infusion towers that produce unique small-batch brews for fun, one-night-only features. As the only build of their kind in Canada, the infusion taps let the Inner City imagination run wild – exploring coffee, cocoa, fruit and tea infusions, and brewing everything from bacon to bubblegum beers as one-off specialties. “It’s awesome,” laughs Doug, “we just like to push our creativity and have fun with it.”

The taproom keeps the fun going by pairing their unique beers with live music events like the Big Winter Classic, brewery tours, trivia nights, brewery yoga, and so much more. As an active member of the Beltline community, Inner City is always keeping up with community events, most recently participating in the YYC BUMP fest in celebration and support of local and Canadian artists. With these weekly events, their rotating taps and their infusers producing one-night-only brews, “No experience in the tap room is quite the same as the last,” says Doug, “we encourage people to come down regularly to see and experience what our team has been up to.”

For more information about Inner City Brewing, visit https://www.innercitybrewing.ca.

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary.

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Prior to Trumps inauguration event and announcement was made that Trump would not be imposing the 25% tariffs…

Which means, Canada seriously dodged a bullet here.

And while the Liberals will most likely frame this as, their success in showing, Bad Orange Man, that they’re tough and ready to burn down what is left of our economy, throwing Alberta under the bus, first…through a nuclear option…

Premier Smith rode this challenge out like the true champion we knew that she would be.

It’s hard to say if this was a legality matter in the grander scheme…or if the 25% tariffs would have truly been as big of an impact on the US…

One thing is clear, however…

Smith was ready to go to the tables with the Trump administration and opt for diplomacy over threats…which should be what we expect from our leaders.

And should these 25% tariffs have gone through…I’m more than sure a Plan B would have been brought out in civil conversations, over screeching rhetoric.

“She’s treasonous”, they screeched.

“She’s supporting her friends in Oil and Gas”, they relent.

“She should put Canada first”, they echo…

And let’s just address these…

Is Walmart beholden to Campbells soup? Fruit of the Loom? Kraft?

Or does Walmart sell products that helps keep their doors open?

Walmart is not beholden to any product…just like Premier Smith isn’t. We have 26% of our GDP – the largest portion – owed to Alberta O&G, something that we have a limited trade partner with, due to the Liberal – Anti-Alberta/Anti-O&G/Anti-Pipeline attitude that wants to spend us further in debt with unreliable and expensive “Renewables”.

What does Alberta get from renewables?

A higher cost for energy, in an affordability crisis, created by the same people who continue to push them…sounds like a terrible deal, for Albertans, and something a true leader would Not Favor.

When Walmart sits down to hash out a deal with Heinz, are they committing treason because they haven’t shown their allegiance to their own, ‘Great Value’ brand Ketchup?

No…other provinces have their own industries and resources, which they are free to continue developing independent of the federal government, as is suitable and supportive of their own economies…Alberta isn’t competing with them, nor Canada as a whole.

Alberta through industry and resource, actually supports Canada through a grand imbalance on “Equalization Payments”…

As do we through paying 50% more into the Canada Pension Plan, than we actually get out of the Canada Pension Plan…to the tune of a $334 Billion Dollars.

And as for this “Team Canada”, horseshit…

The title Premier of Alberta, should hold some clues as to who Premier Smith should be advocating for…as she is the Premier of Alberta and Not the Prime Minister, nor leader in the Liberal Party that has created this fiasco, to begin with.

Rail, as they may…other provinces can’t cast a vote in her support, either way…

None of the other provinces, through Members of Parliament, nor through Premiers, came to support Alberta and our economy through a number of Federal Bills that railed on our provincial resources…

Worse yet…these hypocrites cash cheques from our province, while telling us how to diversify our economy…to which I’d state one thing unequivocally…

If we wanted to be a Have Not Province…like you are…we’ll come and ask you for your advice.

Until then…

I’ll hold my Alberta Flag Higher than my Canadian…

And be proud today, of having the only Premier in the country of Canada, worthy of any praise today!