My second year of university brought with it an unexpected crisis of circumstance. I had a taste for gin and decent wine, and a disdain for hops and malt -- but I also had a bank account that ached for the cheaper option, no matter how noxious it tasted. And so I caved. I kissed (or chugged), out of necessity, the world of fine dorm room highballs good bye, bit the sudsy bullet and started to figure out how to choke down a pint without making it too terribly obvious that I was holding my breath.

The standards were my gatekeepers: Granville Island Pale, Russell Cream, and when at the Biltmore, $3.50 Pabst. Hangovers abounded, and fatigue with the same beer list at every bar set in. I'd conquered my disgust, now I just needed something interesting to prove to me that it was worth staying the course rather than defecting back to my first love, Hendricks.

Thanks to a recent chance encounter, I've found a reason to take a crack at this beer culture thing. One evening, I found myself in the company of one Sam Quinlan, a local masters-degree holding ornithologist and biologist with a particularly unique hobby- growing organic hops on a twenty-acre farm in Lillooet, B.C. with his venture partner, Tim Hazard, under the moniker Bitterbine Hop Company.

Quinlan recalls that, while he and Hazard were working on their respective masters theses, "all these conversations started over beer. Although we were both in grad school, we both had these ideas that didn't have to do with science or biology. Turns out we both had these dreams, which happened to be starting a microbrewery or a brew pub".

Taking inspiration from a growing Eastern Canadian microbrewing community, headed up by operations like Guelph's Wellington Brewery, and particularly influenced by similar operations around Portland -- what he calls a "mecca" for microbrews -- Quinlan quickly noticed that, by and large, Canada was "light years" behind most of the world in creating beers with a story, a heritage, and a footing in the local environment, beers made with authentically local hops, and an emphatically unique character and flavour.

"Most breweries today are buying hops from the US and Europe, and most hop farming there is done on a large, industrial scale," says Quinlan. "Globally, it's this large process that makes things more cost effective for breweries, but... with industrial agriculture in general, you get large inputs of nonorganic fertilizers, chemicals for pesticides... When hops are grown industrially, no one's paying attention to what they can really do for a beer." This is precisely what Bitterbine has set out to change.

But this wasn't always the plan. At first, the intent was to "rent some deep dark space somewhere in Vancouver, 'cause our garages and basements weren't going to work, and brew like mad to make up for lost time". Quickly, though, Quinlan realized that trying "to become a brewmaster in three easy steps" wasn't the way to make a dent in the BC beer industry. Instead, Hazard came to him one night with a bold idea- to buy a hop farm instead. "The next day, I was online, on that MLS site, looking for a piece of land cheap enough and big enough for us to grow hops on." The pair settled on a plot in Lillooet, a small town about 100 kilometres north east of Pemberton, notable for being the hottest town in the country. A very tanned Quinlan points out, "38 degrees on Saturday!"

What came next? In Quinlan's words, "a shitload of research. Tim and I love to do that. We love to sit and learn whatever we can about the nuances of biology. We know everything to know there is about bugs and birds, why can't we know everything there is to know about beer? Seems easy enough."

Throughout our chat, which takes place at a back-corner washroom-adjacent table at the Princeton Hotel Pub, Quinlan routinely refers to what he calls a local beer "movement". It seems to be an oddly political term to use, given the context and subject of the conversation, but something about it, and that spirit of inquiry -- wanting to really know beer and hops -- sticks with me as we talk. Maybe that desire to engage honestly and authentically and deeply with the particular piece of land one owns really does suggest a kind of "movement", some cogent effort to do something more with beer than get biblically shit faced (suck it, second-year self).

This might sound a little "Zen and the Art of Hop Farming," but consider my background -- this is new territory for me. According to Quinlan, Canadian brewers tend to import their hops from Europe and the States, then brew them into something "refreshingly Canadian" with "the taste of the Rockies", or some such nonsense, with no attention paid to how deeply connected beer can be to the soil it springs from and the crew that produces it.

"When we started, we got really excited about using the term terroire", a term adapted from the wine industry that Quinlan defines as "a sense of place that comes from a food or plant being produced in one spot. It's going to be totally unique from something similar produced elsewhere because all the flavour is derived from unique soils, climate, the weather in that particular spot."

We're used to this kind of talk when it comes to fine wines. One Father's Day, I purchased a book for my dad that chronicled the exploits of an international wine merchant. In a now oft-mocked passage, the author claims that with a deep enough sense of taste, smell, and terroire, one can taste in a glass of wine not just the grapes, but the soil, the hares running through the vines, the way the sun hits the dew on the leaves in the morning.

Rhetorical liberties (and maybe vanity) aside, this is the spirit of the "movement" Quinlan keeps referring to. Bitterbine and similar operations aren't staging an overtly political coup, but they're still working to create a new approach to food and drink that celebrates what this land has to offer instead of how much cheaper that land can offer a vague approximation of the same thing. They're investing every acre with a story of people, production, land, and nature. The hops coming from Quinlan and Hazard's plot in Lillooet, and the beer in which they'll ultimately end up, are of a particular terroire characterized by particular conditions and realities that will make every pint into something singular and worthy of real exploration.

As far as a local beer culture, "you're starting to see it show up in Vancouver now," says Sam. Local beer haunts like the Alibi Room in and Six Acres have "the whole package. Alibi has great 'bones', great people, a great turnover of beers. You can go there two, three times a week and always find something new". I have to agree with Sam here: every pint at Alibi comes with a story in tow, and with every new variety you sample, you get to write your own stories and taste experiences with whoever you happen to be sharing the table with. I also happen to have Quinlan and his connoisseur friends acting as unofficial guides -- it helps.

Our conversation gradually veers off course into a hazy reconstruction of our last outing to Pat's Pub and the bounty of cheap pitchers I heedlessly indulged in (though Sam notes, Pat's Lager is entirely local -- not a preservative to be found!). But all the same, I'm sold. My weekly visits to the Alibi Room have become adventures though BC's diverse climates and growing communities. It's seems a daunting terrain at first, especially for those of us more familiar with the trodden path of "whatever's cheapest and at-hand", but it's certainly one worth exploring. The local beer experience offers not only epicurean delights for every palette, but a gateway to the stories our province has to tell. Call me converted -- a toast!

Photo courtesy of Michael Kalus, posted to our Beyond Robson Flickr pool.