Breweries & Distilleries
Richmond's flagship craft brewery, tucked into an industrial unit behind Ironwood Plaza. The tasting room pours a rotating lineup under sci-fi and pop-culture labels, with arcade cabinets, pinball, shuffleboard and corn hole, plus growler fills and off-sales to take home.
Horseshoe Way runs through the industrial pocket near Ironwood in the southeast corner of the city, about as far from a walkable high street as Richmond gets. The setting is a warehouse unit, and that is the standard format for BC tasting rooms for sound reasons: ceiling height, room for tanks, and a license that works in an industrial zone. Ironwood Plaza is next door for groceries or a hardware run afterwards.
Richmond never developed the brewery scene that Vancouver's east side or Port Moody built, and the reason is land rather than taste. Most of this city's industrial property is spoken for by warehousing and airport-adjacent logistics, so tasting rooms have been slow to appear and few in number once they do. That scarcity is worth knowing before you plan anything resembling a crawl, because there is no second stop within walking distance of the first.
Games are part of the offer here rather than an afterthought, which makes it a better group destination than most tasting rooms, where the entertainment is the beer and the conversation and nothing else. A rotating lineup means the thing you liked last visit may have been replaced by something else entirely, so asking what is pouring is the sensible first question. The whole area is built around driving. Decide how you are getting home before you order a second flight, because Aberdeen and Brighouse are a long way north and a taxi out of Ironwood on a Saturday night is not a five-minute proposition.
In the Ironwood neighbourhood of Richmond.
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Other breweries and distilleries and nearby businesses in the Richmond directory.
Britannia's Steveston taproom sits a block off the waterfront and pairs its own British-leaning ales with a full seafood-forward kitchen. Locals come for a flight alongside chowder or fish and chips, and it opens early enough to serve breakfast on weekends.
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Richmond-based electrical contractor working out of Horseshoe Way, handling high-rise and multi-family construction wiring, commercial tenant improvements, and a separate service desk for homeowners, stratas and property managers needing repairs or upgrades.
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Dry cleaner in the Ironwood plaza at No. 5 Road and Steveston Highway, in business since 2000. It handles the usual suits and shirts plus bulkier household pieces, and there is plenty of parking in the plaza lot.
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Ironwood Plaza nail salon with a broad menu: acrylic, gel and solar nails, hand and foot care, a kids' list, plus lashes, microblading, threading, tinting, waxing and facials. Walk-ins welcome and open seven days.
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Practice in the Ironwood complex in south Richmond that leans toward implants, cosmetic smile design and Invisalign. Sedation and laughing gas are offered, which makes it a common pick for anxious patients and longer treatment appointments.
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Family practice in the Ironwood complex with onsite physicians, plus a limited number of walk-in slots for urgent problems. Handles early prenatal care, Pap tests, travel and flu shots, ICBC and WCB paperwork, and telehealth. Open Saturday mornings.
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From the blog
Longer reads from the editor, with the places worth a detour linked inside them.
A third of Richmond BC is still farmland and the food shows it. Where to buy at the farm gate, why the Steveston market is not every Sunday, how to buy spot prawns off the boats at the wharf, when the cranberry bogs flood, and the everyday greengrocers I actually shop at.
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Every October the fields east of Highway 99 flood and turn red. How the cranberry harvest actually works, where Richmond's bogs are, what the farm event involves, and how to go and look at all of it without annoying a working grower.
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The Night Market's final season is the loud story. The quieter one: free admission at the Cannery ends Monday, Britannia keeps summer hours through Sunday, and Steveston does sunsets better than anyone.
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