I honestly can’t remember what exactly possessed us to start naming the tanks. It might have been the passing of Henry’s father-in-law, Art, while we were building the brewery. But once we started it really seemed like the right thing to do.
Of course, we named one of the fermenters after Art. We also named one after Toby, and one after his friend Jim. Toby Chambers was an old friend from my corrosion engineering days in Alberta who was also a home brewer and couldn’t resist coming to help us start up the brewery. Unfortunately we weren’t quite ready to start it up when he and his friend Jim arrived, so instead they generously helped us thread steam piping on their vacation. We gave them lots and lots of beer. The last of the four original fermenters is called Trout, after a very special carpenter who made sure the doors were hung and the walls were up. If you know, you know. The brite tanks we named Al, after Al Keith who convinced me to move to Shelburne back in 2004 and Dave, after Dave Mozel without whom we may never have brewed a batch of beer. Dave was the former brewer at Banff and Jasper Brewing companies and now brewing instructor at Olds College in Alberta taught us how to make beer for real.
When we started to expand we kept on with the naming. We added Kevin (for Kevin Keefe, the grandfather of craft beer in Nova Scotia), John Tippy for my father-in-law who also passed away in 2013 and then Shelby, named for our first employee Shelby Peters and Luigi (it was an Italian tank, and the kids were into Cars back then). We also have Ralph (because we really needed Ralph Swansburg and his excavator to fix the driveway one year) and then the two big Brite tanks are Bertha and Guido. Way more fun than FV-1, FV-2…