Category 12 Brewing
The C12 Story
Carbon 12 + Area 51 = Category 12
A Chemist’s Approach
Beer worth leaving your career for
Category 12’s head brewer and founder, Michael Kuzyk, has been brewing beer for more than 25 years and has his doctorate in microbiology and biochemistry from UVic.
After leading the creation of several world-class research labs, he decided it was time to make his own beer. All work and no play makes… well, you know the rest.
Michael grew up on the Saanich Peninsula and has been a home-brewer for most of his life. When layoffs came at the scientific software company where he was working, friends who believed in his beer offered to invest, and a hobby became a full-time job. C12 is dedicated to the pursuit of exceptional beer.
building connections & community
Spreading the Word
Good beer doesn’t do any good if no one knows about it. Karen Kuzyk is C12’s co-founder and leads branding and marketing, and she has shaped how the brewery looks and sounds, from the lab-inspired taproom to the cans.
She calls herself a recovering wine drinker: Belgian-style beers converted her. Transmutation, the first beer Michael brewed at home that she loved, is the one that started it. She enjoys an Imperial IPA and the espresso stout, and about half the taps are there to make her happy. She wants people to know that not all craft beer is hoppy.
Watch for her at your local pubs, liquor stores and festivals, and be careful: her passion is contagious. As for the taproom, she describes it as “Mad Men meets Breaking Bad: mid-century cool with a dark academia edge.”
The C12 Thesis
brewing beers we like to drink
Bold beers for strong minds.
With continual tinkering, Category 12 offers a continually expanding line of seasonal releases, including beers that pay homage to its favourite big Belgians and hoppy Northwestern ales.
Our obsession with great beer, recipe optimization and meticulous record-keeping was honed in the research lab, and it shows in every batch.
The lab is where it starts: yeast strains are grown on site, wild yeast and bacteria are put to work, and the hop-forward beers fill about half the taps.
The Future of the Brew
Keep on experimenting
We experiment with a 150 L pilot brew system that allows us to fine-tune recipes that scale to our 1,500 L production brewhouse, and we have more than a few on the books.
Our brewhouse is proudly made on Vancouver Island, just around the corner from the brewery. Specific Mechanical has made over 350 brewing systems over the last 30 years, and ours was the first one they were able to walk over and enjoy in person.
150 L
Pilot brew system for fine-tuning experimental beer recipes
5 days
How long our first beers lasted after the taproom opened in December 2014
1,500 L
Production brewhouse capacity, that’s only 30 kegs!
120+
Unique beers we have released during our 12 year existence.