Nelson was established as a mining town in the late 1880s and it did not take long for brewers to arrive and capitalize on the growing population of young men.
Details of the earliest breweries are sparse, but Nelson’s first brewery was likely built in 1891 near a spring on Mill Street at Josephine Street. This first brewery was plagued by financial difficulties and operated periodically for only five years. Meanwhile, German-born brewer Robert Riesterer had arrived in Nelson and established a brewery on Mill Street at its intersection with Ward Creek in May 1893. Riesterer was known as one of the finest brewers in British Columbia. Riesterer’s Brewery or simply Nelson Brewery sold draught beer for 50 cents per gallon and bottled beer at $10 per barrel. The brewery had capacity for producing 500 gallons of lager beer per day and a refrigerating storage capacity of 500 barrels.
But Riesterer had local competition. In 1897 the Castle Brewery was established on the 100 block of Chatham Street on Hume Creek. The brewery was managed by William Gosnell and was sometimes known as Gosnell’s Brewery. Castle Brewery beer was sold in many of the communities along the railway lines that connected the Kootenays from the Boundary to the Crow’s Nest. The brewery closed around 1905 after being amalgamated with the Nelson Brewery. A short-lived brewery known as Imperial Brewery also operated next to a skating rink on Hall Mines Road from 1899-1901.
Nelson Brewery built the existing brewery on Latimer Street in 1899. The site, also referred to as the “brewery on the hill,” was further up Ward Creek than their previous location and provided a good supply of fresh water for brewing operations. Operating day and night, the brewery produced up to 30 barrels a day for market across the Kootenays. The brewery survived the death of Riesterer in 1902 and extended its market area when it built a second brewery in Princeton in 1906, which they operated for a decade. The brewery also managed to survive the challenges of B.C.’s short-lived prohibition era from 1917-21, largely achieved by producing low-alcohol beer and expanding its soft drinks production (Nelson Brewery became the district agents for Coca-Cola). Under the name Nelson Brewing Company from 1904, and Kootenay Breweries Limited from 1928, the brewer maintained its position as one of the leading breweries in the Kootenays.
John Erb came to Nelson in 1936 to become brewmaster at Kootenay Breweries, taking up residence in the company house at 504 Latimer St. and playing an important part in modernizing operations. In a 1985 audio recording Erb recalled that the insides of the oval oak beer tanks were painted to prevent the beer soaking into the wood using “brewer’s varnish” – the man who was applying it could only stay inside for 10 or 15 minutes because of the strong wood alcoholic smell from the varnish and would have to be dragged out of the sealed tanks through an eight-inch-wide manhole to prevent him from passing out. In the 1950s a decision was made to amalgamate the four Kootenay breweries in Fernie, Cranbrook, Trail and Nelson into the Interior Breweries Limited based at a new plant in Creston. Production ceased at the Latimer Street brewery in 1959, and Nelson storage moved to an Interior Breweries warehouse that was built on the 100 block of Silica Street in 1963.
For 32 years Nelson was without a brewery. Then in 1991 partners Patrick Glenny, Tim Pollock, and Rick Dietrich decided to end the drought and re-established the Nelson Brewing Company at their landmark Latimer Street location, which at the time was in serious threat of being demolished. More recently, Torchlight Brewing Company (est. 2015) and the Backroads Brewing Company (est. 2017) have joined the thriving craft brewery scene in the city.
Jean-Philippe Stienne is the archivist and collections manager at the Nelson Museum Archives and Gallery. History Buff runs monthly.
