The Manitoba born-and-raised farmer believes that the concept of buying local should come from simply wanting a superior tasting product – something he’s cultivated over six years at the helm of Dead Horse. “I’m a big supporter of ‘buy local,’ but as a producer, it’s up to me to actually provide a product that you want,” said Wiebe. “Maybe I can get you to try something because it’s local, but I want you to buy it again because you like it.”

Prior to Dead Horse, Wiebe, a fourth-generation farmer, grew crops of peas, beans, sweet corn and pumpkins. With a surplus of orders, he moved his operation to a larger facility adjacent to Dead Horse Creek in southern Manitoba’s Pembina Valley. Looking to find more ways to use the facility year-round, Wiebe invested in an apple press.

“My thought at the time was that there were so many apples going to waste in Manitoba,” said Wiebe. “No one was pressing or buying apples commercially then, and all the apples from hundreds of apple trees in the province were just going to landfills.”

Wiebe began pressing apples to sell juice in bulk, but with a shelf-life of only 10 days, he often found himself with fermented apple juice on hand. “I thought, ‘Why aren’t we just fermenting this on purpose?’” he said. With the facility, apple press and cooler already in place, Dead Horse Cider Co. was officially born in 2017, with its first cider released in 2018.

Southern Manitoba is a unique agricultural area for apples. In the 1960s, the Morden Research Station, just a 15-minute drive from Dead Horse, was tasked with developing apples that could thrive in the Prairie’s harsh winters. This has made for unique varietals that can only be found in this select region. For instance, the Kerr apple, a cross between a Dolgo crabapple and a Haralson apple, can adapt to a variety of soil conditions, stores well and has a sweet and tart flavour.

Kerr apples are winter-hardy and get picked after the fall frost, at which time Wiebe processes them into Dead Horse’s Life Is Rosé reserve, a semi-dry cider featuring a blushing rose colour and a fruity, mild tannin flavour. Life Is Rosé won Best in Class at the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition in the Rosé Cider category, and it’s the product Wiebe says he’s most proud of. “We wouldn’t have this type of cider if we were outside this part of Manitoba,” he said.

Wiebe leverages the ingredients that are available to him, sourcing apples mostly from small orchards and – get this – people’s backyards. For Dead Horse’s core ciders that are available across Manitoba liquor stores and beer stores – such as its Cherry On cider and Far from the Tree cider, which features hops – Wiebe sources thousands of pounds of ingredients to ensure he can get through a full calendar year of production, relying on local farmers and producers as much as possible, and calling upon B.C. farmers for more apples when needed.

As many are experiencing right now, producers or not, costs are rising. Whether it’s interest rates or produce prices, cider producers are feeling the pinch. For Wiebe, this also influences the products he’s able to sell. “I’d love to sell a Haskap cider in stores, but the price point would have to be way too high for most consumers,” he said.

However, it’s not just Wiebe’s costs that are taking a hit – he knows consumers are, too, and he’s hoping provincial laws will eventually take a more unified approach to pricing structures for any alcohol that’s under six per cent, regardless of if it’s beer, ready-to-drink beverages or cider.

“Most consumers don’t know that beer is marked up less than cider,” he said. “I’d like to see more of a level playing field.” For now, it’s Dead Horse’s Reserve Cider line where Wiebe has the opportunity to flex a little more creative muscle. “We’ll create one-offs, just depending on what’s available. If someone wants to give us Haskaps, blackcurrants or strawberries, we’ll use that as inspiration for a small batch,” he said. “We try to use any types of Manitoba fruits that might have been forgotten otherwise.”

Dead Horse, which now has four full-time and 10 part-time employees, also produces its Backyard Blend seasonally, a community-based cider made from backyard apples. Every fall, Dead Horse accepts apples from across Manitoba for pressing in exchange for cash, fresh juice or hard cider. Every 25 pounds of apples received means a 500-ml bottle of the product in return.

I’m a big supporter of ‘buy local,’ but as a producer, it’s up to me to actually provide a product that you want. Maybe I can get you to try something because it’s local, but I want you to buy it again because you like it.

Marcus Wiebe, Dead Horse Cider Co.

“With Backyard Blend, we wanted to find ways to use up all these backyard apples so that none of them went to waste,” said Wiebe, who says that last year, Dead Horse was able to save about 200,000 lbs of apples from the landfill.

Backyard Blend guarantees that each year’s product features different flavour notes after its fermentation and bottling period, which lasts approximately four to five months. These blends are typically dry, featuring varietals such as crabapples, Goodland apples and Norkent apples. “We leave it as a dry, scrumpy cider that changes every year, from its sourness to more tannins, but they’re always easy drinking,” said Wiebe. “Dead Horse got started because we wanted to find ways to use up Manitoba apples. Backyard Blend is a way that we stay true to our roots.”

Backyard Blend isn’t the only way that Dead Horse cultivates a strong connection to its community. Through its Artist Series, Dead Horse collaborates with local artists to pair its cider with custom-made bottle labels that create limited-edition works of art while showcasing how much talent Manitoba has to offer.

For its Artist Series, Dead Horse creates a rough version of a cider blend and gives it to an artist in its community to let it inspire them, whether that’s through songwriting, collage, painting or any other medium. Then, Dead Horse will feature that artwork on the bottle once the final cider is released, sharing profits with the artist on each bottle that’s sold. As part of the deal, artists also get to collaborate with Dead Horse to host an evening in the taproom, where they can showcase their creations with friends, family and the community.

The choice to make Dead Horse’s taproom a welcoming gathering space for its community was intentional. The taproom is an inclusive, social environment that isn’t just about enjoying great cider. In fact, Winkler, the town that Dead Horse is located in and that Wiebe is from, was a dry town as little as two decades ago. Dead Horse embraces that its customers might have differing viewpoints on alcohol consumption. Because of this, Wiebe has created a relaxed space where consumers know they can enjoy a cold cider, but if they don’t want to imbibe, Dead Horse can work with that, too.

“We try to create an atmosphere where everyone can feel welcome and safe, and enjoy our patio even if you’re not a drinker,” said Wiebe, noting that Dead Horse also offers non-alcoholic options and regularly hosts guest chefs and events such as trading card nights.

While Wiebe ensures that Dead Horse stands as a strong pillar in its community, he knows he’s up against some stiff competition in the cider space. However, his viewpoint on that might be surprising. “I don’t view craft cideries as competing against each other,” he said. “I view all of us [as] competing against large companies. It’s such a competitive world, and we do a great job on social media, but most players just don’t have the money that Molson does, and so you miss out on the ad spend,” he said.

While supporting local is great, at the end of the day, that’s not a good enough reason to keep purchasing Dead Horse products, says Wiebe. “People sometimes talk about making cider in Manitoba like it’s some kind of obstacle we’re overcoming,” he said. “In reality, we make this cider because we’re here, because we have these unique Prairie trees and because we couldn’t make these varieties anywhere else. We’re making these ciders because we’re in Manitoba, not despite it. I hope that our quality of product and what we represent will encourage people to buy, and to continue to buy.”

Although most of the brewery’s production now occurs on a 60-hectolitre DME brewhouse, christened in Calgary’s Foothills Industrial Park in 2016, the face of the brand is the brewery’s taproom in the historic Currie Barracks area, which Wild Rose has called home since 2005. That taproom also houses a 10-hectolitre Bohemian brewhouse, which makes some keg-only products for distribution and serves as Wild Rose’s innovation centre with weekly brewing and recipe experiments occurring on a one-hectolitre Blichmann Engineering brewhouse.

This taproom and innovation centre sits in a simple, green Quonset hut on land owned by Canada Lands Company, a federal Crown corporation. The lands are part of a former Canadian Forces base, and plans to redevelop the area have been off and on for the entirety of Wild Rose’s life there, conjuring almost annual uncertainty to their lease. However, this uncertainty has brought a scrappiness to the brewery, helping it not only survive, but thrive through the ups and downs over the years.

A part of the community

The Wild Rose Taproom can accomodate 110 people inside, featuring décor made from upcycled brewing equipment and kegs, a 110-person patio, with unobstructed sunshine since there are no nearby buildings, and a private event space for another 110 people.

“This is just about the most ‘Alberta’ place you can find,” said Adam Ward, general manager of the taproom. “We celebrate being located on the old army barracks. And we have no TVs, non-intrusive music and community tables to promote people talking to each other.

“The entertainment is the room. It’s telling that we are kind of in the middle of nowhere. Many businesses might find that a negative, but for us, it means people coming here put effort into [being here] and want to be here. So, our taproom has an energy nobody can explain or replicate.”

Happy customers and a unique energy translate into staff happiness. “We have employees who have been with us for over 20 years,” said Ward. “And even if they leave, we have lots of former staff continue to be some of our best customers.”

Being a long-time part of the Calgary community means the staff have even had the opportunity to watch families grow at the taproom. “We have couples who came here when they were dating, got married in our event space, come each year for their anniversary and now bring their kids because our taproom is child friendly,” said Sarah Basha, the taproom events manager.

Despite a skeptical public, some of who feared the acquisition by Sleeman Breweries would change the brewery, Wild Rose has doubled down on its efforts to remain local. Ingredients for the brewery and the kitchen are sourced as locally as possible. In fact, Wild Rose staff plant community gardens every year, the bounty from which often makes its way into the taproom kitchen. Even at the production brewery (which continues to make only local Wild Rose brands), all base barley and wheat are sourced from Alberta.

Every month, proceeds from the sale of the taproom beer are donated to a local charity. Dubbed the “Patron’s Pint,” the charity is always a local one, nominated (as the name of the program implies) by a taproom patron. Over the years, that has amounted to tens of thousands of dollars being contributed to local organizations as diverse as military museums and children’s sports leagues.

Basha is particularly proud of the brewery’s support of New Heights School & Learning Services. The local organization is not just a school for individuals on the autism spectrum, but it works to help its students integrate into the community. In addition to financial support, the Wild Rose Taproom uses its private event room to host meals as part of New Heights’ “Transition to Adulthood Program” so the students can learn to order food and interact with wait staff in a real, but controlled restaurant setting.

A part of the environment

For Wild Rose, being a part of the local community also means being a part of the global environment. To that end, they have invested in many sustainability initiatives, championed by a company-supported Green Team.

In addition to sending spent brewing grains to farms to be used as livestock feed – as is common with many breweries – Wild Rose has replaced all lighting in its production brewery with energy-efficient LED lighting. The brewery is installing an effluent tank to better deal with wastewater and is instituting procedures to side stream much of the brewery waste (malt, hops, yeast, fruit) and have it collected by the same organization that collects the brewery’s spent grain to supplement animal feed. Brian Smith, Wild Rose’s director of operations, reports that 60 per cent of the brewery waste is recycled and that they are continuously striving to increase that percentage.

“We have couples who came here when they were dating, got married in our event space, come each year for their anniversary and now bring their kids because our taproom is child friendly.”

Sarah Basha, Wild Rose Taproom

The brewery also tracks utility usage on a per-hectolitre basis with the goal of constant improvement. For 2024, Wild Rose has plans to install additional submetering to get more granular information on how much energy is being used by specific equipment and processes. The brewery will also begin venting compressors to the outside to use colder air, reducing utility costs. Lastly, Wild Rose is involved in a carbon dioxide usage project where all processes (packaging purge times, Bright Beer Tank head pressure, etc.) are being tweaked as a challenge to see how much CO2 usage can be reduced.

These initiatives are part of the brewery’s formal participation in the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) program, which has had the additional benefit of increased employee engagement.

Support for the environment is even part of Wild Rose’s team building efforts, with the Green Team organizing challenges throughout each year’s Earth Month. Such challenges include riding bicycles to work, zero waste and plant-based lunches, and clothing donation.

Data drives decisions

Participation in SBTi is evidence of Wild Rose’s dedication to improvement through data, not just lip service to social trends. In addition to annual diversity, equity and inclusion training for all staff, the brewery is undergoing an accessibility audit at both facilities. Another example of this is the brewery’s involvement with Beer Canada.

“We get great data and reporting from Beer Canada,” said Smith. “We can see consumer and sales trends, and these are very helpful as we make decisions.”

The future is Wild

In response to customer feedback and the Beer Canada data, Wild Rose plans to release 12-packs of 355 ml cans of their best-selling Wraspberry Ale this year. If successful, this will be followed by other beers in larger packs (currently, the brewery’s beers are available in four-packs of 473 ml cans).

Wild Rose’s plans to improve accessibility and inclusion, and to reduce environmental impact are incremental, but impactful. Smith downplays the brewery’s work, suggesting that things like submetering “are nothing sexy,” but it is these small, continuous improvements over a long period of time that have made Wild Rose the success that it is.