Cheers to two years: Burnaby's newest brewery celebrates 2nd birthday

It’s only a two-year-old’s birthday party, but the beer will be free-flowing.

If you’re a beer fan, you’ve likely visited Burnaby’s newest craft brewery already. Studio Brewing (5792 Beresford Street) opened in February of 2021, but it’s already created a niche for itself in the hearts of craft beer lovers across the Lower Mainland.

The brewery is celebrating its second birthday on Feb. 25 with an event it’s calling Lagerfest, where there will be—you guessed it—plenty of lagers on tap.

“We're gonna be putting on four of our own lagers and two other breweries’ lagers. And they're great—because lagers are very difficult to make, they take a very delicate touch. It's why a lot of breweries actually don't even make a lager,” said Studio’s front of house manager Morgan Miller-Sutton.

Alongside the lagers and other beers on tap, guests can expect live music from 3-6pm and a bratwurst pop-up by Coquitlam-based Legends Haul.

Miller-Sutton said the idea of the event is to celebrate not only the brewery itself—but also the community that put it on the map.

“We are celebrating the fact that we've made it this far with our excellent community of people who have been supporting us for so long, like neighbors and other businesses. Our business extends far beyond the walls of 5792 Beresford,” she said.

Miller-Sutton said Studio’s first birthday party saw a huge outpouring of support from the community, with people lined up in the rain for a couple hours just to get into the event. Luckily, that’s not expected to be the case this year—there’s added seating, increased capacity, and a covered patio now.

Council recently approved an application by Studio Brewing to make the current patio, set up on a temporary basis during the pandemic, permanent.

Miller-Sutton said opening a brewery during the pandemic—to an empty tasting room, but a packed patio—is just one of the hurdles Studio has had to overcome in the past couple of years.

“There's always something going on here. We've been broken into twice, which was not very fun, especially with the thousands of dollars of damage that was caused. The beer industry is a bit of a tough industry [right now]—with inflation, and prices of goods going up across the world due to various reasons, and COVID, it has not been easy,” she said.

“We've been chugging along, we've been doing our best trying not to let it get us down. And honestly, the community has been so incredible. We have so many regulars who live within a couple blocks radius, we have so many people taking the skytrain all the way out to come visit us. And we’re in tons of stores now. So the support has been incredible, even on our craziest days.”

You can visit Lagerfest on Feb. 25 at Studio Brewing’s taproom (5792 Beresford St).