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Fire Bloom is the beer that rises from the ashes of wildfire — and gives back to a parched landscape.
Fireweed is a plant that earns its name from its knack for blanketing a fire-scorched landscape with showy magenta-pink blooms swishing on slender green-leafed stalks. It pushes up through charcoal, sometimes only weeks after a burn, thanks to fire-adapted rhizomes that survive underground where above-ground plant material has burned.
Fireweed’s tiny windborne seeds germinate in newly opened, sunlit spaces as well. Whichever way it appears, this pioneer species quickly covers and stabilizes soil, feeds deer and other wildlife with tender new growth, and offers vital early nectar for pollinators. Fireweed is a symbol of resilience and regeneration, and now is becoming more abundant as wildfires affect more and more of Canada’s natural spaces.
It was in the “fire season” of fall 2022, that brothers Ryan and Collin Mortson, and their friend Cole Glendinning, opened a neighbourhood restaurant and microbrewery in southwest downtown Calgary.
In honor of the brothers’ late father, who relished the social rituals of a good beer at the end of a workday, the restaurant — Best of Kin Social — was built around a shared love of brewing and creating a space that celebrates “the social qualities of good food and beverages.” Ryan describes the taproom restaurant as a casual, inclusive hangout space that serves its surrounding neighbourhood. The menu offers pub-style comfort food, and the events range from trivia nights and live music to an annual Christmas dinner and drag performance.
“We’re family-focussed — including chosen family. And we’re community-focussed,” says Best of Kin’s “Head of Business Stuff,” Ryan Mortson.
With ongoing community initiatives baked into its business model, Best of Kin looked to contribute to climate solutions very early on. (“Brewing can be a carbon-intensive industry,” Ryan explains.) In 2023, Best of Kin partnered with the multinational tourism operator, Pursuit, which carries Best of Kin beers in its Banff and Jasper National Park properties. Their first project together was to support Project Forest, an Alberta non-profit that rewilds and replants landscapes for individuals, groups, and corporate partners looking to pay back some of their carbon footprint by returning damaged land to its carbon-capturing and wildlife-supporting potential.
That same year, “Head of Brewing Stuff” Collin Mortson, spotted fireweed honey at his local farmers’ market. The beekeeper explained that they were collecting more and more of it every year, a bittersweet consequence of increasing wildfires.
“We’d never seen fireweed honey,” says Ryan about his brother’s discovery, “and we started reading about it because honey can be an ingredient in beer.
The idea arose for a specific beer using fireweed honey from which some of the profits could fund wildfire recovery projects. Funds raised by sales on tap at Best of Kin Social, through its partner Pursuit’s properties and attractions, and in select Alberta liquor stores went towards relief efforts in 2023 — a year notable for more than 6000 fires that burned across Canada, affecting a historic 15 million hectares, the most on record.
Best of Kin was able to source honey from Planet Bee Honey Farm in Vernon, BC, where fireweed thrives in post-fire zones in the Okanagan Valley. “It’s like the Champagne of honey,” enthuses Ryan. Paired with the unique flavour profile of Sasquatch hops, Canada’s first proprietary hop, Best of Kin launched Fire Bloom Honey Lager in summer of 2023.
“I would say it’s very clean and crisp. And you get some mild and delicate sweetness in the beer from the honey. It’s a light-bodied North American-style lager, and it gets a bit of a green-tea finish from the Sasquatch hops,” describes Ryan.
In July 2024, tragedy struck again when the Jasper National Park wildfire burned over 33,000 hectares and destroyed 375 properties in the namesake townsite. Through another partnership, this time with Banff’s Mount Norquay Ski Resort, proceeds from Fire Bloom Honey Lager are being directed to the Jasper Community Team Society and its July 2024 fire recovery fund, an on-going multi-year effort to support displaced residents, businesses, and the affected community.
Born from disaster, this is the beer that Best of Kin doesn’t want to keep brewing. But Fire Bloom Honey Lager’s social good is acting like the wildflower itself: filling a need in the ecosystem when a disturbance occurs. And for consumers, it’s a feel-good, tastes-good proposition. “It’s a bit of a different spin, where it’s about hope: the rebirth, the regeneration, and the pollination, as opposed to doom and gloom,” explains Ryan.
Indeed, climate action happens at all levels, and good food and good beer brings Canadians together. Now there’s an option to raise a glass and toast resilience — and support the people and places that are rebuilding.
Listen to Rethinking Wildfire, episode 2 of Bluedot’s podcast Imagine If, in which our hosts talk with anthropologist and former Los Padres Hotshot Jordan Thomas, author of When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World, to explore how we got here and what a better relationship with fire could look like.
