Kokanee beer
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Kokanee is a popular beer brewed in the Columbia Brewery in Creston, British Columbia. Columbia Brewery began brewing Kokanee lager in 1959 and was purchased by the Labatt Brewing Company in 1974.
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[edit] The beer
A light, flavourful beer, it is most-commonly found in the Western provinces of Canada and the Pacific Northwest states of the USA, with sparse or non existent distribution in eastern provinces and states. It is known for its crisp flavour and relatively inexpensive price. The Columbia Brewery also brews Kokanee Gold, with a fuller body and 5.3% alcohol content, Kokanee Light, and Kokanee Frost.
Kokanee is a Pilsner Style Lager with 5.0% alcohol v/v and is British Columbia's most popular beer[ref]. It contains no preservatives and is aged naturally. The "Glacier Fresh" taste of Kokanee (a marketing slogan for the brew) is created by making the beer from pure mountain stream water. It uses three varieties of malt and a blend of western grown North American hops.
[edit] Marketing the brand
Kokanee's two marketing slogans are "It's The Beer Out Here" and "Glacier Fresh". Kokanee advertisements are quite frequently shown on Canadian television stations, the ads centre around the beer's official mascot, Mel the Sasquatch. The ad campaign follows the storyline of the "Kokanee Ranger" and his unsuccessful attempts to hunt and catch the Sasquatch who is stealing the Kokanee beer; these commercials parody the real life Sasquatch hunter René Dahinden, who appeared in the first Kokanee commercial of its kind. A few years ago, the Ranger recruited three Glacier Girls to join the search to catch the elusive Sasquatch. Just recently, a new campaign was started encouraging customers to visit a website (RangerLiveOrDie.ca) and vote on whether or not the Kokanee Ranger should live or die.
Kokanee also sponsors the annual Crankworx mountain biking festival in Whistler, British Columbia, which is one of the largest Freeride mountain bike festivals in the world.
[edit] The name
Kokanee is also another name for the Sockeye salmon. The beer is named after the Kokanee Glacier in the Kootenays region in which Creston is situated.
[edit] The label
The picture on the label consists of a mountain known as Grays Peak in British Columbia.[1] The picture on the label on the can shows a man or Sasquatch standing on top of one of the peaks. The entity is not in the pictures on the box packages. He is always located in the same spot on the cans, but varies on different bottles.
