New brew pays tribute to pioneer of Nova Scotia craft beer industry

Craft brewers in Nova Scotia are paying tribute to the man who helped kick-start the industry in the province with a new beer made in his honour.

Kevin Keefe, who died in 2024, was the founder of Halifax's Granite Brewery, which was the first craft brewery in Nova Scotia when it opened inside Ginger's Tavern in 1985.

The 2025 Together We Brew beer, a nod to the beers Keefe made at the Granite Brewery, is an English-style bitter that is "bready and full-bodied with a balanced bitterness," says the Craft Brewers Association of Nova Scotia. 

Joshua Counsil, a co-founder of Good Robot Brewing, which produced the beer in collaboration with dozens of other breweries that are members of the association, says it's nice to pay tribute to a man who had all the time in the world for him when he was starting out in the industry.

"We wouldn't be here in this province if it weren't for the initial strides he made. So at a time when the [industry] is getting hit with some turbulence, economic conditions and so on and so forth, it felt right to pay homage to the person who made it happen in the beginning," said Counsil in an interview with CBC News on Saturday.

He said Keefe had a lot to do with how Nova Scotians became open to the complexities of craft beer, drawing many people away from the traditional beer that was the norm and pushing them to develop more discerning palates.

"He was serving to downtown Halifax in the gritty and grimy days of the late '80s and early '90s," said Counsil. 

"He brought this bold, strange English style with these weird techniques and this exotic open fermentation that very few breweries practise today or then and put it in front of people who were domestic drinkers who drank something familiar and somehow managed to convert them."

Counsil said 6,000 litres of the limited-edition beer have been produced and the brewery is already down to the final 1,000 litres just a few weeks into the release.

Debbi MacDonald, the executive director of the craft brewers association, said a small percentage of each sale will help fund scholarships and bursaries offered by the organization, including one that aims to get underrepresented populations involved in the industry.

The beer is now available in liquor stores and taprooms across the province. 

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