“Classic Blue.”
Dan Stampone rolled the phrase around in his head. It was 2019, and Pantone had just named the “timeless and enduring” azure hue its 2020 Color of the Year. The color reminded him of something equally timeless—a refreshing can of Labatt.
At the time, Stampone was brewing at Stoneface Brewing Co. in Newington, N.H., and it dawned on him that he could take the concept of Labatt Blue—a nostalgic beer he remembered seeing advertised during Philadelphia Flyers games—and reimagine it with an American craft beer ethos. The idea finally came to life in 2021 when Stampone was at Tributary Brewing Co. in Kittery, Maine, and released Canadian Pilsener as a winter seasonal.
Stampone moved on to Batson River Brewing and Distilling, and a year later, he re-debuted the beer as a rotating lager. In both iterations, it was brewed with Canadian pilsner malt, but this time, he upped the ABV to 6.2% to give it more of a Labatt Ice feel. He billed it as “the ultimate hockey beer.”
“We really wanted to make something that kind of fit the mold [of a Canadian macro lager] but also was very much a craft beer at the same time,” Stampone says. “There’s a sort of punk rock part of me that’s reawakened in doing something that’s like, ‘Alright, this is like that, but we’re gonna do it differently.’”
Stampone was not alone in his vision. Over the past five years, in the absence of any style definitions or brewing conventions, dozens of breweries across America have tried their hand at reinterpreting Canada’s industrial lagers through the lens of craft beer. From Oregon to Texas, “Canadian-style lager” is popping up on taplists and store shelves, often just in time for hockey season. But with a trade war looming, can this trending flight of fancy hang on long enough to become a veritable style?
Our Home and Native Brand
Josh Pfriem’s muse was Kokanee, the Labatt-owned lager synonymous with British Columbia. He remembers sneaking out to Whistler, where the drinking age was 19, and knocking down cold Kokanee in the hot tub of the resort. Now as the co-founder and brewmaster at pFriem Family Brewers in Hood River, Ore., Pfriem took a shot at formalizing what it was about that mountainside lager that captured his young heart.
“It’s very familiar to be drinking cold, crisp Canadian lagers in the early winter,” Pfriem says. “But they always leave you a little something to long for. What if the malt had a little more flavor? A little more hops? A little more bitterness? A little more conditioning time? That’s what we’ve done.”
First released in late summer 2021, pFriem Canadian Lager is the brewery’s loving rendition of a “quaffable,” “near-translucent” Canadian macro. These are defining characteristics of the substyle. While there are no true style guidelines, brewers who make the style agree that a true “Canadian-style lager” should be made with a measure of Canadian pilsner malt. They should contain an adjunct, be it corn, rice, or a combination of the two. German noble hops are used to create a crisp, “snappable” finish.
But what makes Canadian-style lager a potential “craft” style is a push-pull between its low-brow appeal and slightly elevated recipe. pFriem Canadian Lager uses Alberta-grown barley, glacial mountain water, and a stewed rice cereal to enhance the Kokanee style to the standards of the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s just what we did with Mexican lager,” Pfriem says. “We said, ‘Hey, why don’t we make a craft version of Modelo, going back to the historical roots of what a Mexican lager was and looking at some of the industrial versions now, and doing our own take with higher quality ingredients, better brewing process, and making something kind of modern?’”
Heath Barker brews his beer under the light of a neon Labatt Blue sign, so the lead brewer of Eugene, Oregon’s Oakshire Brewing knows exactly what Pfriem was going for. Barker dreamed up Oakshire’s own Canadian-style lager, Visit Victoria, as part of their rotating series of international lagers. Visit Victoria is cold-conditioned to emulate Labatt and Moosehead and made with flaked corn and rice syrup to lighten the body and add sweetness.
Canadian macros are still selling well in America, up 3.2% in sales last year, but Barker associates the style with a bygone era. Visit Victoria is not just a postcard from British Columbia, it’s a dispatch from a time when Canadian pilsner stood out as a more nuanced, exotic alternative to Coors Light and Miller Lite.
“It’s just a little bit different than a normal American light lager, a little more flavorful,” Barker says. “The main characteristic of the style is the Canadian malt, so we try to showcase that as much as we can.”
The 51st State of Play
On February 16, Team USA faced off against Canada in Montreal for the National Hockey League’s 4 Nations Face-Off, a tournament to crown the best nation in ice hockey. As Officer David Grenon of the Royal Canadian Air Force Band readied to sing the pregame rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the Canadian crowd erupted into a chorus of boos.
This was no mere hockey rivalry, this was a direct response to President Donald Trump’s heightening trade war with USA’s neighbors to the north. Since his election win, Trump had been chiding Canada with caustic rhetoric about annexing the massive country and relegating it to “the 51st state.” Soon after taking office, Trump began stoking a trade war by threatening (and partially implementing) massive tariffs on Canadian exports.
Canadians have responded by going “elbows up,” a phrase borrowed from NHL legend Gordie Howe, to defend their national sovereignty. And they started with beer. Canadian liquor authorities have stopped stocking American-made products, and Moosehead released a gimmick “Presidential Pack” of 1,461 beers to help Canadians stock up for the remainder of the Trump presidency.
Canadian malt is used to brew hundreds of styles of beer in most American breweries. If tariffs make Canadian agriculture products unaffordable, brewers can switch to other domestic malts. But Canadian-style lager requires Canadian-grown barley. If the barley becomes too expensive or difficult to get, it could kill the substyle as it’s just coming into being.
“I did receive an email from the supplier that we buy the Canadian pilsner malt from, saying that the price of this malt and other Canadian malts will be increasing,” Stampone says. “It will impact this beer, and that’s unfortunate, because I’d really like to see Canadian lager brewed by other people.”
Tyler Fitzpatrick, brewmaster at Lamplighter Brewing Co. in Cambridge, Mass., is less concerned about the cost of goods deterring brewers from making Candian-style lager. The style remains an exciting prospect because its classic appeal can endure things like international crises.
Lamplighter launched their Canadian-style lager, a collaboration with Moniker Brewery of Providence, R.I., right in the middle of the fracas. The breweries kept the messaging around the beer playful. They appealed to nostalgia while also toying with the boundaries of Canadian beer, finishing their beer with Mandarina Bavaria hops instead of noble hops to give it extra fruitiness. They named it We Pucked Up and marketed it without a thought to existential things like trade policy. Te lack of standards or a guaranteed future is what made it worth doing.
“There’s no appellation, we don’t have to abide by rules,” Fitzpatrick says. “We’re working backwards from a feeling.”
All About Beer receives support from underwriters who understand and appreciate the importance of independent journalism in the beer space. Please subscribe now and keep the content flowing and fresh.