20 Fascinating Facts About Canadian Beer

Posted by Brent Furdyk on April 6, 2017

Any Canadian of legal drinking age has no doubt downed a beer (or six). But how much do we really know about this iconically Canadian beverage? Probably not as much as we think, and these awesome beer facts are sure to increase your knowledge of Canada's favourite frosty drink.

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Stubbies!

The "stubby" bottle was iconic in Canada until it was taken out of circulation in the 1980s when Canadian brewers switched over to American-style longnecks. As it turns out, market research showed that <a href="http://www.professorshouse.com/food-beverage/beer/articles/canadian-beer/" target="_blank">women didn't like the stubby</a>, preferring the lengthy elegance of the longneck.
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Chill Out

You may think it takes some serious time in the fridge or freezer to get a beer nice and cold, but you can actually chill a beer to frosty perfection in a mere two minutes. All you need is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ncuv3gewI" target="_blank">some salt, ice and a bowl</a> to enjoy a cold one, no waiting required. This clever hack also works with non-beer beverages as well, but why would anyone want to drink those?
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235 Bottles of Beer on the Wall...

According to <a href="http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/newsrelease/13-11-05/beer_industry_boosts_the_canadian_economy.aspx" target="_blank">2012 statistics</a>, the average Canadian bought about 235 bottles of beer that year.
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Canada's First

French herbalist Louis Hébert and his wife are <a href="https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/brewed-in-canada-the-untold/9781550023732-item.html" target="_blank">Canada’s first documented brewers</a>, with the immigrants brewing beer for their own personal private consumption as early as 1617.
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Beer Bucks

As a whole, <a href="http://montrealgazette.com/news/national/who-are-canadas-biggest-drinkers" target="_blank">Canadians spent $9.14 billion on beer in 2013</a> ($324 per adult), which equates to 2.27 billion litres of beer. That's a whole lotta brew!
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Beer is #1

The most popular alcoholic beverage in Canada is — you guessed it — <a href="http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2013/11/05/who-knew-beer-facts-in-canada/" target="_blank">beer</a>! In fact, beer makes up more than 45 percent of all alcoholic beverage sales in Canada.
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Beer Economy

According to <a href="http://www.rcinet.ca/en/2013/11/05/who-knew-beer-facts-in-canada/" target="_blank">the Conference Board of Canada</a>, one out of every 100 jobs in Canada is supported by the sale of beer, with every dollar we spend on beer generating $1.12 for the nation's economy. This "beer economy," in fact, supports 163,200 jobs throughout Canada.
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Prairie Gold

Anyone who's ever spent time in the prairie provinces knows that German beer is wildly popular in Western Canada, and <a href="http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/54/beerincanada.shtml" target="_blank">for good reason</a>. During the boom-town days, German-American beer brewers headed north in hopes of setting up shop and serving their beer to thirsty customers.
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Stronger Than American Beer?

The notion that Canadian beer is stronger than American beer is actually just <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/17/Drink/America_vs_Canada__Th.shtml" target="_blank">an urban myth</a>. In fact, Canadian beer is a relative weakling when compared to some of America's highest-alcohol-by-volume brews. This fallacy began because alcohol was measured differently in each country, with the U.S. using the alcohol-by-weight method, while Canadians used the alcohol-by-volume method of measurement.
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Beer Pre-Dates Confederation

Canadian beer is actually older than Canada. In fact, beer production in the Great White North <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Brewed-Canada-Canadas-300-Year-Old-Industry/dp/1550023640" target="_blank">pre-dates Confederation</a> by a good 200 years.
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Killer Beer?

Unless you're of a certain age, you probably don't remember Dow beer, and there's a very good reason for that. Back in 1967, the Québec brewery was thought to have inadvertently caused the deaths of 20 beer-drinkers. The reason: the brewery <a href="http://www.beeretseq.com/dow-ale-a-great-beer-name-with-a-sad-ending/" target="_blank">added a larger than normal amounts of cobalt sulphate</a> to the mix in order to stabilize the foam, not realizing that in a high enough dose, cobalt can be harmful. The ensuing negative publicity pretty much sealed the brewery's fate.
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Glass All Empty

Although you won't find it in regular dictionaries, apparently there's an actual phobia in which sufferers experience fear of seeing an empty beer class. This disorder is called <a href="http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/cenosillicaphobia/" target="_blank">Cenosillicaphobia</a>; the cure is a good bartender who knows how to keep 'em coming.
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Czech Beer-Public

Canada's got to have the highest per-capita consumption of beer in the world, eh? Sorry, not even close. That honour goes to <a href="http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/jf02/justthebeerfacts.asp" target="_blank">the Czech Republic</a>, which drinks more beer per capita than any nation on Earth. Canada, by the way, ranks 17th.
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Malt Magic

Canadian companies were responsible for <a href="http://internationalbeerfest.com/what-makes-local-canadian-breweries-unique/" target="_blank">pioneering the processes of continuous malting and continuous brewing</a>. This has revolutionized the brewing process. Yay, Canada!
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Medieval Quality Control

Back in the medieval period, beer was such an important commodity that it required quality-control workers — called <a href="https://affotd.com/2012/10/24/six-random-facts-about-beer-you-did-not-know/" target="_blank">ale-conners</a> — whose job was to visit taverns and sample the beer in order to ensure the alcohol content was high enough so as not to rip off customers. A Homer Simpson dream job, if there ever was one.
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Old Gold

John Molson founded Canada's first brewery in Montreal way back in 1786, making Molson <a href="http://www.molsoncoors.com/en/about-us/heritage-in-beer" target="_blank">Canada's oldest brewery</a> — as well as the oldest in North America.
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Fill 'er Up

It's no secret that we Canadians drink our fair share of beer, but consider this: the volume of beer sold in Canada during the year 2000 would <a href="http://fillerup.ca" target="_blank">fill Toronto's Skydome</a> — and then some.
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Tavern Talk

In the early days of Canadian settlement, beer was an integral part of the community. That's because the local tavern not only served beer, it <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Alcohol_and_Temperance_in_Modern_History.html?id=BuzNzm-x0l8C" target="_blank">was also a meeting place</a> where the community would gather; a place for judges to hear complaints, politicians to seek votes and preachers to preach.
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Newfoundland Rules

The region in Canada with the highest beer consumption per capita? That would be Newfoundland and Labrador, <a href="http://montrealgazette.com/news/national/who-are-canadas-biggest-drinkers" target="_blank">according to Statistics Canada</a>, finding that adults drank the equivalent of 101.2 litres in 2013.
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Can Do

The <a href="http://www.bcca.com/acco/" target="_blank">very first beer cans</a> were introduced in North America in 1933 by New Jersey-based Kruger Special Beer. No pull tabs like the cans pictured, the first beer cans required a "church key" can opener before you could take a swig. Brent Furdyk is a freelance writer in Vancouver.
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