Calgary's Newest Brewery Allows Guests to Experience the Battle Between Good and Evil While Serving up Some Devilishly Delicious Beer.
YYCTOURS stopped into the newly opened Evil Corporation Brewing in Calgary. Their 'barless' concept packed with hidden messaging, religious connotations and eye-catching visuals throughout, delivers both thought inducing content on the battle between good and evil and devilishly good beer.
Evil Corporation Brewing which was founded by four friends, Melanie Jackson, Anthony Jackson, Dan Piekut and Quan Ly, (the later not only gave us an in-depth behind the scenes tour, but also let us in on some of the secret subliminal and supraliminal concepts at Evil Corp), is a playful conceptualization of corporate greed and all things good and evil. The four founding members have backgrounds in the corporate world and used that experience to cleverly devise their own interpretation of big business translated into the sphere of craft beer. It also appears that when they sat down to conceptualize their vision, they took the build-a-brewery-playbook and threw it out the window of their corporate lair.
Upon arrival at Evil Corp, the battle for good and evil begins as one enters what brewery owner Quan Ly describes as Purgatory, the religious state between heaven and hell where one is absolved of their sins. Contrarily, white rooms are also used as a method of psychological torture and a way to deprive one of their senses. Either way, once you walk through the doors, your slate is clean and you are ready to truly experience Evil Corp. It is here that guests are also able to purchase propaganda, merchandise and beers to go.
After a spiritual cleansing, one can head down the blood red hallway to the conference room and washrooms, or turn left into the 'barless' taproom where the coolest set of beer taps you may ever see are mounted on a hexagonal monolith in the middle of the floor. Owner Quan Ly says the design follows that of 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham's vision of a hexagonal prison titled Panopticon. From the Greek meaning "All-Seeing", the Panopticon was a hexagonal structure and social control design that allowed inmates to be monitored by one single guard without not knowing if they were being watched or not.
The walls at Evil Corp are adorned with sound panels all representing numbers in a Fibonacci sequence and the glassware (beakers) are straight out of an evil science lab. In the brewery with equipment built by Brewha, the tanks all bear the names of British high-yield nuclear weapons such as Red Snow and Green Granite. Also in the brewery, the hexagonal theme continues with hive-like lighting.
The small-batch brewery combines the home brew feel with state of the art equipment and allows Evil Corp. to produce some high quality brews. A further collection of blending tanks also helps Evil Corp. to create a series of flavoured products from a single batch. The beers currently offered by Evil Corp are very well crafted and are quickly catching the attention of craft beer fans in Alberta. To read our Evil Corporation Beer flight review, click here.
At YYCTOURS, we are often asked if we think the Calgary brewery scene has reached a saturation point and we say look no further than Evil Corporation Brewing for an answer. Their unique and creative take on design and brewing has only opened the door for the industry to take another step forward. With more than 25% of the available medals at the 2023 Canadian Brewing Awards going to Alberta breweries, it is only a matter of time before Evil Corp makes their mark on the province, and then takes over the world. Muahahaha.
YYCTOURS is Calgary's only up to date source for all things craft beer. Be sure to ask us to visit Evil Corporation Brewing on a Calgary Brewery Tour.