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On the other hand, on the global scene, a merger between AB InBev and SABMiller was proposed, which would unite the world’s biggest breweries and provide the biggest Goliath yet for small, passionate outfits to counter.

So Estabrooks looks at how we got to our current state of beer brewing and appreciations. Aleberta chronicles Western Canada’s often prickly relationship with alcohol over the years, including our first experience with prohibition. That dates back to the pre-Alberta 1800s when the North West Mounted Police arrived on the scene to control the wild whisky trade. Our second prohibition, championed by a growing temperance movement, lasted from 1916 to 1924.

Since then, the province has had a number of bizarre laws that, at one time, were strictly enforced by armed Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission officers. Some of them stayed on the books for a surprisingly long period. They regulated everything from table, chair and glass size to the sort of art that could be displayed in drinking establishments.

From 1927 to 1967, men and women were not allowed to drink together. Establishments had to enforce segregation and have separate entrances. This was not to protect women from drunken men, but men from salacious women, Estabrooks says.

“They didn’t want women to corrupt the men,” he says. “The women who would hang around beer parlours were seen as loose women.”

But the documentary’s forward-looking final episode, which traces the recent rise of craft brewing in the province, catches Alberta brewing during another lively period; a “third-wave” in our brewing history that is making Alberta a hotspot in innovative suds, he says.

“We’ve evolved to a point where beer culture in Alberta is super exciting,” Estabrooks says. “This documentary shows where it came from and why.”

Aleberta: Our Beer History will screen Thursday at the Globe Cinema at 7 p.m. Visit aleberta.com for streaming details.