Craft beer renaissance: Newfoundland and Labrador hops on the bandwagon

With start-up nanobreweries, brewpubs opening and even the first craft beer festival in St. John's, it seems like Newfoundland and Labrador is on board with the larger craft beer trend.

• What to expect from N.L's 1st craft beer festival
• Mill Street Brewpub opens its doors in St. John's

In a regionthat for so long was dominated by a few brands made by corporate giants likeLabatt and Molson, the last year or so appears to havesignaleda shift in theattitudesof beer drinkers and beerentrepreneursin Canada's most easternprovince.

In Port Rexton, couple Alicia MacDonald and Sonja Mills have been working away to get their microbrewery, Port Rexton Brewing, open to the public sometime in 2016.

Meanwhile in Pasadena, a trio of entrepreneurs are hoping to get their brews in the glasses of local customers by this summerand become the first microbrewery outside the Avalon Peninsulawhen they launch theWestern Newfoundland Brewing Company.

To top it all off, St. John's has just seen two new beer-focused pubs open next to each other on the waterfront; the new Bier Markt and Toronto craft-beer favourite Mill Street Brewpub.

And of course there are thelocal companies like Quidi Vidi Brewery, YellowBelly and Storm, whichin a waywere ahead of the curve by offering their own uniquebrews to the province for years.

Beer festivals

Just as newbeer bars and microbreweries are turning on their taps for the first time, burgeoningfestivals and events are also coming with this newbeer trend.

The province'sliquorcorporation has plans fora Beer Expo in May 2017, andSt. John's is about to host Newfoundland and Labrador'sfirst evercraft beer festival.

St. John's Brewfesttakes placethis weekend, and will featuredozens ofdifferent beersfrom a variety of smaller regional operations from four different countries. More than 40 of them will be available inthe provincefor the very first time.

This craft beer boomis relatively new toNewfoundland and Labrador, but across Canada the movement has been buildingup steam for a few years. The federal agriculture industry haseven recordeda spike in consumption of local and regional brews recently.

All across the country, new brew festivals and startup brewerieshave been bubbling up, offering a whole world of funky brand names and colourful unconventional labels that all leave the impression this is no longer your father's beer culture from decades past.

What is craft beer?

Tom Beckettwiththe N.L. Artisanal & Craft Beer Club spoke to CBC this week ahead of the St. John's Brewfest, and explained what makes something a craft beer.

"The best way to explaincraft beer is that itis relatively small batches, made with high quality product or with a very traditional approach," he said.

"It's differentiated from what they call industrial beer, which is a recipe that had been geared towards less expensive ingredients but isstill trying to maintain the same taste and profiles."

Steve Abrams, co-founder of Mill Street Brewery, was in St. John's for the company's Brewpub opening this week.

He told CBC that the craft beer trend has been going on in the rest of Canada for a number of years now and that his company knew it was working its way east to Newfoundland and Labrador.

"When I started the brewery in 2002 there wasn't much of a movement going on, at least in eastern Canada. Now everybody seems to be quitting their day jobs and starting a brewery," he joked.

"It's an artisanal movement, it's not just beer. It's food, it's cheese, it's coffee. People want to know who is behind what you're drinking orconsuming."