Welcome to Lillooet.
We are pursuing a novel approach to making craft beer by focusing entirely on ingredient origins. We aim to empower Canadian farmers and craftspeople who harvest beer’s key ingredients – hops & barley. We will support wild foragers, beekeepers, and others who source food from the land to provide us with inspiration to make our localized & organic beer.
It’s pretty simple. We think our brewery’s foodstuffs should be grown in Canada. We also think it should be grown organically and challenge farmers to use more sustainable techniques towards a brighter future.
Who are Sacha & Sam?
Meet Sacha
Sacha resides in Lillooet as a carpenter and jack of the trades. He’s been rebuilding this town one house at a time as a contractor and has been busy transforming 104 Main Street’s historic Feed Store into a one-of-a-kind tourist destination and cozy get-away for Lillooet’s thirsty residents. Sacha is a graduate with distinction from Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s brewing program which formalized his many years of homebrewing and set forth the momentum to start planning a brewery for Lillooet.
Meet Sam
Sam splits his time between Lillooet and Vancouver after having spent a decade learning to grow organic hops from a beautiful river bench in East Lillooet. He has a degree in Environmental Science from the University of Guelph and a Masters degree in Wildlife Ecology from Simon Fraser University, where he studied behavioural ecology of migratory songbirds. His scientific background and deep passion for British Columbia’s wildlife fuels the brewery’s unique mission: to protect south-western BC’s At-Risk wildlife and vulnerable ecological habitats. Sam founded and operates the world’s only exclusive organic hop company, Harvesters of Organic Hops (HOOH). HOOH processes and distributes organic and BC-grown hops to breweries worldwide. Sam is excited about selecting hop lots for each beer made at Lillooet Brewing. Next time you see Sam, ask about the hops in any of the beers and get ready for a story! Sam has traveled the world studying hop production and will use this expert knowledge to select the best hop lots Canada’s farmers have to offer.
Conservation, Lillooet Wild.
Co-founders Sacha Bordas and Sam Quinlan are both passionate about Lillooet’s wildlife. Sacha, a conscientious hunter and seasoned outdoorsman, really cares about the wildlife around Lillooet. Sam is an ornithologist who traveled the world studying birds and protecting their habitat. He knows Lillooet has some of the rarest bird species in Canada and wants to keep them around for generations to come.
So, in making our beer, we decided to put Lillooet’s wildlife front and centre, literally. Every beer we make will celebrate and educate Lillooet’s At-Risk species and other keystone species that keep our delicate ecosystems alive.
Visitors to Lillooet need a place to stop in and ask questions about Lillooet’s vast wilderness. We want our brewery to be the town’s ‘wildlife headquarters’. A place for people to converge, discuss, plan and explore. We hope your journey will motivate you to learn more about the wildlife unique to our area and seek to find ways to protect their populations and habitat.