Red Collar Brewing

Kamloops’ downtown brewery is a gathering place for beer lovers.

Brewmaster David Beardsell has a long history of brewing in Kamloops dating back to the 1990s when he opened the city’s first microbrewery, Bear Brewing. After some time away spent travelling with his family in a converted bus, he got back into the brewing game by opening the Noble Pig Brewhouse, a food-focused brewpub, and consulting on some other brewery start-ups before deciding to open this place. Red Collar has a big 80-seat tasting room along with an outdoor patio space, and the beer list is diverse and interesting. Recently, he has started taking a step back from day-to-day operations, handing the reins to a new head brewer and his daughter Lara, who manages the business side of the company.

Fun Fact

While studying brewing in Munich, Germany, in the 1980s, David Beardsell visited a Trappist brewery in Belgium where he befriended two of the monks, Father Theodore and Father Charles. They got along so well they even gave him some of the monastery’s proprietary yeast, which Beardsell eventually brought home to Kamloops and put in cryo-storage at the local university. He uses it to brew Belgian-style beers to this day, including Red Collar’s Dubbel, Tripel and Quad.