Okanagan Spring Brewery

Beer is made from water more than anything else, which is why breweries put down roots where the water is good and then stay put. The North Okanagan has that in abundance, along with the rail and highway links that carried the valley produce out for a century. Okanagan Spring Brewery belongs to that industrial thread in Vernon, working from 2801 27A Ave in the flat blocks close to the downtown core.

For Vernon, a brewery is also part of how the city works. Manufacturing on this scale buys locally, hires locally and keeps trades busy, and the city has always mixed that kind of employer in with agriculture and the service jobs that come with being the hub of the North Okanagan. Visitors up from Kelowna or over from the Shuswap will find the site close to the middle of town rather than out on an industrial fringe, a legacy of how the city grew outward from its centre. Traffic through the core is heaviest in the afternoon, so mornings are easier for finding an address in these blocks.