Yukon Ingenuity: In conversation with Two Brewers’ Bob Baxter

A love of exploring the Canadian North by canoe led Al Hansen (stern) and Bob Baxter (bow) to the Yukon

For the second in our ‘In conversation with’ series we head to Whitehorse in the Yukon by zoom for a catch up with Bob Baxter:

First up, what is your role with Two Brewers and how do you split things with Alan Hansen?
As you know we started as a brewery, but we both come from an engineering background. Al is a Chemical Engineer, whilst I’m a Mechanical Engineer. When we went to brewing school in Chicago, it was funny as we’d go to a chemistry lecture and Al came back with reams of notes, me nothing, then we’d go to a lecture on pumps, and I’d come out with sketches and diagrams, and Al came out with blank paper.  We had the process of making beer covered. Our biggest challenge in those early days was the marketing. Engineers don’t know how to market, or at least we were not great at it. Today Al has started to wind down.

He’s older than you?
No, I just don’t know when to quit. A couple of years ago we decided that it was time for us both to wind down.  My son Tyson, who has worked with us since he left University five years ago is taking over more and more of the work we used to do, and Al works with him on the whisky sampling and blending.

Baxter sounds like a Scottish name. Do you have Scottish roots?
Yes, but a couple of generations ago on my Father’s side. My Mother’s ancestry is Hungarian.

I guess we should start with the brewery, tell us the story of Yukon Beer?
In the mid 90s Al and I were doing a canoe trip down the Jennings River. I’d had an idea for a craft brewery in the Yukon and we talked about it around the campfire each night. I didn’t know Al very well back then, we were friends of friends on the same canoe trip, but his enthusiasm for the idea was the kick I needed to turn a day dream into reality. We’ve been lucky, our personalities, our skill sets melded, we’ve been able to push each along during the hard times. We turned out to be excellent partners.

You knew the Yukon from canoe trips, but why did you think there was an opportunity for a brewery?
We had a love for craft beer, but there was none available in the Yukon. It’s big in land area, but its tiny, just 40,000 people. (For comparison the Yukon has a land area twice that of the UK, but with a population similar to Perth or Stirling). It was the idea of rising to a challenge were we’d have to be good enough to export out of province to make it work. The licensing authorities were a bit confused by our application, they didn’t know what craft beer was.  When we got the license the first thing we did was buy bigger and better home brewing equipment than we had been home brewing with, to experiment with. It was a leap of faith hoping we would be able to improve quality as we increased the scale.

So the company name is Chilkoot Brewing Co., but the beer is Yukon Brewing, why?
The Chilkoot was the path the klondikers hiked from Skagway in Alaska over the mountains to get to the Yukon during the gold rush in the 1890s. The RCMP, the police force, were concerned the prospectors weren’t properly equipped to survive in the Canadian north, so they had a list of equipment and provisions they had to carry to be allowed into Canada, which was checked at the border high up on the pass. So these poor guys did this hike multiple times from Skagway to get their gear to the checkpoint.  We thought Chilkoot would make for a cool name for a brewery. Whilst important to us, when we were selling out of province, or to the US, no one understood what it was about. After we had explained it wasn’t a fish or a bird the common response, was ‘Oh you are from the Yukon, why didn’t you say so’. Chilkoot is important to us, not to anybody else, so we thought we’d better start doing business as Yukon Brewing.

The Chilkoot trail during the gold rush of the 1890s, with a queue of prospectors shuttling their gear to the Canadian border

So you were home brewers before you turned your hobby into a business. How did you learn the craft of distillation? Were you home distilling!?
Home distilling is not legal in Canada! From the off Al wanted to buy a still, but in those early years sometimes it was touch and go whether we would make payroll. After six or seven years we came to the conclusion that we had something that worked. We went to a distilling school at Michigan State University. German still makers Christian Carl were giving the course, so afterwards we bought a still from them. They wanted to fly someone over to install it for us and teach us how to use it. We looked at the cost of flying someone from Germany to Whitehorse and said; ‘You know what, we’ll figure this out ourselves’. It arrived in a crate in 2009 and over the Easter weekend we installed it.

So you’ve got one still, so you do both distillations in it?
No. One of the things we talked to the guys in Germany about is we already have a brew kettle. With our climate, for brewing we didn’t want the steam from the kettle going up a chimney and outside, so the steam goes through a gooseneck and is condensed back into water. So we said to them how about we modify the brew kettle and do our first distillation in it? Christian Carl said without copper contact that won’t work, but suggested taking the swan neck off, and adding a copper helmet. So we tried that, but there still wasn’t enough copper contact. We then added copper wool in the helmet. So to do the first distillation we unbolt the swan neck of the brew kettle, then bolt on the copper helmet, so our brew kettle acts as our stripping still. Folks visiting and doing the tour say ‘That’s amazing, who else is doing this’, and our answer is, ‘We are not aware of anyone else doing this’.  Our still is tiny, just 500 litres, but our brewing kettle is 2500 litres.  

The brew kettle with its copper helmet and condenser attached to do the first distillation

If I understand correctly you have a brewing season and a distilling season?
We do. We lean so hard on the brew house when we are making whisky. We need the brew kettle for beer, so we can’t make beer whilst we are stripping whisky. Summer, when the tourists come, we are too busy brewing, so we distil in the fall and winter, brewing in the spring and summer. For distilling we brew 10,000 litres of distiller’s beer, fermented to 6% or 7%, which once stripped and distilled will fill eight barrels de-proofed to 65%. We do five or six batches a winter.

How does the climate in Whitehorse affect the production and maturation of Two Brewers Whisky?
Not like you would expect. Whilst the temperature in Whitehorse can range from +20C to -40C, the barrels aren’t outside. They are stored in the brewery at a constant 15C. We would be worried about the integrity of the barrels if they were exposed to -40C.  But what varies is the humidity. When its extreme cold outside, its very dry inside. Then at times the brewery can be releasing a lot of humidity to the air inside. So the influence of the climate on Two Brewers Whisky is not the extreme temperature, but the variation in the humidity.  

So the casks are stored in a heated warehouse, that must be expensive?
Yes, they are in a heated warehouse, but we are engineers so we’ve created a system to use waste heat from the brewing process to heat the building.

Someone at The Whisky Show was telling me that alcohol sales in the Yukon are really high, due to tourists en-route to Alaska, is that right?
Beer consumption per capita in the Yukon is much higher than the Canadian average. We have a population of just 40,000, but over the course of the summer 400,000 tourists visit. The per capita figures don’t take into account all the tourists, so it looks like we drink a lot more than we do!

Please can you introduce the releases we have just received?
Release 38, from our Peated line, is 71% from peated spirit aged for 11 years in former bourbon barrels, blended with a 10 year old un-peated spirit, so technically it’s a 10 year old. When we are putting together a release, the contribution the barrel will make to the blend is more important than its age, so we don’t put age statements on the whiskies. There were 960 bottles released in Canada and 90 bottles for the UK.

Release 41, part of the Special Finishes series, was finished in Pedro Ximénez sherry casks for two years, initially matured in bourbon. The youngest casks were seven years old, but some 8 years old and nine years old. 6% of the spirit is from a peated mash. It’s a release of 1050 bottles in Canada, plus the 90 bottles for the UK.

Who writes the tasting notes?
My son Tyson and Al. They do a great job, they’re our wordsmiths.

Two Brewers Release 35, Release 38 and Release 41, now available in the UK

Running a brewery in the Yukon must have some challenges, but what opportunities does it open up?
Yukon is home. I love it here. It’s a great place to live. Yes, in some ways it makes no sense. But part of the attraction of the Yukon was the small population size would mean from the start we would have the challenge of producing beer good enough to export. Our location means we have to be creative and work things out ourselves, like installing the still ourselves. People in the Yukon help each other. The hydraulics broke on our bottle washer a few years ago. We couldn’t fathom it out, and flying in a hydraulics engineer just seemed absurd. But we knew of a company that rents fork lifts, so we figured they might know about hydraulics, so we said ‘Hey, you probably know more about hydraulics than we do, fancy trading some hydraulics knowledge for some beer?’, they said ‘Sure’, and by the end of the day the problem was solved.

You’ve won a few awards over the years, which one are you most proud of?
We are at Release 41 now, we’ve entered every release in the Canadian Whisky Awards, over multiple years, and we’ve come home with something every year, 7 medals this year. It’s the consistency of winning medals at the Canadian Whisky Awards that I am most proud off.

What’s next for Two Brewers?
Honestly, we’ll carry on doing the same thing. Beer pays the bills, but boy whisky is a lot of fun. No immediate change to how we do things.  Beer in summer, whisky in winter, but Al and I are winding down. My son Tyson, who studied chemical engineering in Toronto, and started with us washing kegs and sweeping floors, is taking on more every day. My daughter Corey has also come back to join us, after getting a degree in International Business. She works for us in a split role covering finance, events, sponsorships and social media. She is a Swiss army knife. Right now we don’t need more stills, but hopefully one day Tyson and Corey will need to make that call to the coppersmith.

That’s great, sounds like Tyson and Corey have inherited the Two Brewers spirit of ingenuity. Many thanks Bob.

For a chance to try the new Two Brewers Release 38 Peated and Release 41 Special Finishes do visit our stands at Grantown Does Christmas (2nd December) and the Harrow Whisky Festival (12th & 13th January).

Cheers!

Robert, November 2023