If you still wear your sunglasses at night, Port Moody’s newest brewery might just be your jam.
Rewind Beer Co. is set to become the sixth craft brewery on the city’s famous Brewers Row along Murray Street, joining Parkside Brewery, Twin Sails, Moody Ales, Yellow Dog and The Bakery Brewing.
And it’s bringing a serious 1980s and early 90s vibe to the party.
Rewind is a project of nearby Parkside.
Marketing and social media manager Travis McLean said the company wanted to give its staff more opportunities to grow and its brewers a chance to flex their creativity beyond Parkside’s more vintage style.
The era of MTV, teased hair and bright neon colours seemed a natural landing spot as all the owners grew up in the 80s and 90s.
“We’re passionate about the era,” said McLean, who’s 43. “We get all the inside jokes.”
It’s also a demographic wheelhouse, tweaking a sense of nostalgia in Millennials and Gen Xers while tickling the ironic funny bone of the generations since then.
The concept “has legs,” McLean said. “You can really set a scene.”
Well, he might be underselling it.
For anyone who lived or grew up in the 80s, Rewind will be like a funhouse of memories: from the serving counter built of heavy glass bricks — complete with a brass foot rail — to the bright neon ceiling lights that evoke the buttons from a video game hand-controller.
McLean said the tasting room draws from all kinds of pop cultural touchstones, too, from music and movies to technology.
The crew dipped into their own memory banks to come up with the ideas that bring the decade of excess back to life.
The handles on the beer taps are brightly coloured reproductions of early cellphones that were about the size and weight of a brick.
The beer menu board looks like a theatre marquee at the old Lougheed Mall or Eagle Ridge cinemas.
Snacks such as Detroit-style deep dish pizza are listed on Coca-Cola peg boards affixed to a wood panel wall next to an arched serving window, just as you might have found at old pubs like the Barnet Hotel or the Cariboo on North Road in Coquitlam.
The labels on take-home cans will be based on hand-written stickers affixed to old VHS tapes. Paddles used to serve tasting flights will look like modified trays from a mall food court.
Decorating the walls will be posters for movies from the era, like The Princess Bride and Aliens. TV monitors will play music videos like the ones that aired on MTV after its launch in 1981.
Even the heavy steel mesh tables on Rewind’s outdoor patio are a throwback to the functional furniture of Expo ’86 in Vancouver.
“It’s going to be a visceral experience,” McLean said, adding the ambience has to navigate a delicate balance between enjoying the nostalgia of the 80s while not getting too sentimental. “It didn’t seem to age well,” McLean said of the decade. “But now it has a fun brightness to it.”
Beyond the tasting room, the brewery’s array of smaller stainless steel tanks will allow it to produce a variety of small-batch beers to keep the taps running with at least seven different styles.
They, too, will call back to the era with an emphasis on light ales and lagers, as well as newer sours and fruit beers that bring dashes of colour to the heavy, dimpled mugs in which they’ll be poured.
It’s all about “progressing with the times, while rewinding to the good times,” McLean said before adding a shoutout to the movie Back to the Future, which was released in 1985.
“We’re like Marty McFly. Set the timer and go.”
• Rewind Beer Co. is located at 2809 Murray St. If construction continues apace, it’s expected to open in mid-September. Check its social media channels on Facebook and Instagram for updates.
