Way, way back in the late 1990’s, we produced our first beer made with local low bush cranberries. The base was a North American style unfiltered wheat ale, which we thought would make the perfect backdrop for the tartness of cranberries.
To get local cranberries, we hung signs around town looking to buy clean picked cranberries. And it worked, we got the ingredients we needed to give it a try.
Well, it turned out to be very popular. Which gave us another problem – cranberries can only be picked in the fall and, depending on the weather, sometimes there is a great crop and sometimes no crop at all.
In order to make it year round, we decided to purchase the cranberries from a supplier. We quickly learned that almost every cranberry ever grown is bought by Ocean Spray. So, they became our source.
Trouble is, they are a huge, huge company and we needed a couple of 20 litre pails at a time. Organizing this purchase was a pain for us and a pain for them.
Eventually, we found a supplier in Quebec. We used them for a while, although it was a long way to ship and resulted in the occasional hiccup.
We stumbled on a supplier in Vancouver, and that has worked fantastically. We buy cranberry puree (picture cranberries run through a blender) on a regular basis from them, and we are always impressed with the quality.
For the longest time, we simply called this beer Cranberry Wheat Ale. This certainly made the beer style obvious to the customer, but we eventually decided – this beer needs a name.
Deadman Creek is an actual creek, located in the Yukon east of Whitehorse. There is no special significance to the name – we just like it. And, we thought that it opened the door to a pretty funky piece of art that we could use for the packaging development.
Deadman Creek is one of our full time bottled products. These products find their way on to our growler system from time to time, and we generally don’t make a big deal of it. But, it has not been there for some time, and so we thought we would get the word out there. Deadman Creek is a perfect spring beer, light on the palate, 4.7% abv, and rather tart and refreshing. If you have not tried any for a while, now is the time to pick some up on tap. Bring in a growler and give it a go.
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