Category: beer festival

bc beer awards

you’re coming to the bc beer awards, right?
hosted by the awesome stephen quinn
and full of delicious beers
i see absolutely no reason for you not to go!
ticket prices go up on october 10th so get your tix now

Vancouver, BC (August 19, 2014): The 5th Annual BC Beer Awards & Festival is set to return to Vancouveron Saturday, October 25, 2014 from 4-9pm at the Croatian Cultural Centre (3250 Commercial Drive). The signature consumer tasting event of BC Craft Beer Month, this festival celebrates the very best in craft brewing from across the province. A one-day only event, it features both the craft beer festival and the BC Beer Awards ceremony hosted by Stephen Quinn. There will be 4 Education Classes available this year at a cost of $15.00 each, taught by some our industry’s top talents. New this year is a snazzier event. There will be beer, balloons, glitter, a photobooth, and there may even be a crown.

Early bird tickets are $27 (plus tax) for the BC Beer Awards & Festival. Ticket prices will increase to $32 October 10, 2014. All tickets for the Education Classes will also be available Tuesday, August 19th, 2014 at http://www.bcbeerawards.com.

The Full Story:

The BC Beer Awards & Festival (BCBA) has become one of the most anticipated beer tasting festivals in the Lower Mainland.

Due to the huge success of last year’s event, we will be returning to the Croatian Cultural Centre (3250 Commercial Drive, Vancouver). The look will be a little bit different. We’ll be dimming the lights and adding some glitter making BCBA THE awards event of the year.

This year, there will be 4 Education Classes to choose from. The classes, taught by our industry’s finest, will be, Off Flavours, Malts, History of Beer, and Hops. We have also increased this years class sizes to accommodate their popularity. Tickets will cost $15 each.

Tickets for both the BC Beer Awards & Festival and the Education Classes will go on sale Tuesday, August 19, 2014 at the Early Bird price of $27 via http://www.bcbeerward.com. On October 10, 2014 ticket price increases to $32 (plus taxes)

Last year’s BC Beer Awards judging drew over 400 unique entries from over 40 BC breweries and brewpubs, with winners selected in 12 distinct categories. Judges included certified beer judges, cicerones, sommeliers, journalists, as well as noted beer and food lovers. The BC Beer Awards adheres to standards set by the Internationally-recognized Beer Judging Certification Program (BJCP).

The mandate of the BC Beer Awards is to reward excellent beers even if not brewed exactly to strict style guidelines. Secondary is ensuring that every beer brewed in BC can be entered regardless of whether it fits in a style or not. Craft Brewers across the province are well-known for their innovation and creativity, something that the BCBA organizers are keen to help celebrate.

The BC Beer Awards & Festival is generously supported by Vancouver Brewery Tours, Chrislan Cermaics, Donnelly Group, Hops Connect, and Canada Malting.

For more information, please visit their website at BCBeerAwards.com or follow the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

beer column

here are my notes from yesterday’s beer column on cbc radio’s on the coast with stephen quinn:

Get out your calendars and mark down these beer festival dates!

There are beer festivals all year round, but right now is a particularly rife season, just thick with festivals here in BC, and it is not entirely due to Oktoberfests!  There’s the Great Canadian Beer festival in Victoria, the BC Beer Awards, Whistler Beer Festival, Yaletown Brewpub’s Caskival, Harrison Beer Festival, Powell River Oktoberfest and Bomber Brewing’s Oktoberfest just to name a few.

There are definitely elements that are common to all beer festivals – drinking beer for starters – but there are differences, which is why you can’t just say you’ve been to a beer festival and now you’re done.  Some beer festivals have a theme – like Oktoberfest or casks – some are big, some are small, some are about beer and food pairings – like Vancouver’s Brewery and the Beast meat and beer feast – some are held on a boat – like the recent craft beer cruise in Vancouver, some are held indoors, some out of doors, some are a couple of hours long, some are weeks long.  If you can think up the variation, I would bet that at least one beer festival exists to fit that niche.

The real joy of a beer festival, besides the camaraderie of drinking with so many fun people, is the opportunity to try many different beers in small sample sizes.  It’s the time to be adventurous and drink outside your comfort zone.  Try that style you’ve been too afraid to spend $8 on.  At a beer festival you just get a small pour so there’s no big investment.  I have discovered many a wonderful beer this way.  Last year’s Great Canadian Beer Festival stand out for me was Moon Under Water’s Red Wheat Wine, the first I had ever heard of this beer style – and I loved it. 

But omg, what are you going to wear?  Will a beer tshirt do?  I mean they are pretty much the entire contents of a beer geek’s wardrobe…I have lost count of how many beer tshirts I own…

I have yet to attend a beer festival that had an actual dress code.  Many people go in their best leiderhosen to oktoberfests and there are some great costumes at the Great Canadian Beer Festival every year, including leiderhosen.  If costumes aren’t your thing and you happen to own a beer tshirt or three, those are always a good bet to wear to a beer festival. 

You can also tell a beer geek by the rest of their festival gear.  Do they have a lanyard around their neck with a taster glass hanging from it?  Beer geek.  Do they have a notebook and pencil?  Beer geek.  Are they wearing a pretzel necklace?  Not their first beer festival!

In no particular order, some beer festival survival tips: 

– Go early.  The festival may last for several hours but the rare beers will sell out quickly, so if you want some, you have to be there when they open the doors or gates. 
– Read the beer list.  Find beers you haven’t tried before and have those before settling in for old favourites.  Some beers are only available in BC at festivals. 
– Talk to the person pouring your beer.  If they’re the brewer they can tell you all sorts of interesting information about the beer. 
– Stay hydrated.  I like to do a water cycle after each beer sample.  I don’t always succeed, but it sure beats forgetting entirely and hitting your threshold too early on. 
– Pace yourself.  There are more beers than you can possibly drink.  You won’t get to them all, so don’t try!

And on to the list of upcoming festivals:

September 5 and 6 (i.e. this weekend): Great Canadian Beer Festival in Victoria.  Mostly beers from BC, but there are beers from elsewhere in Canada and the United States.  Saturday tickets are sold out but a few Friday evening tickets remain.

September 11-14 – Whistler Village BeerFestival, the tasting fest is on Saturday the 13th from 1-5 and tickets are on sale for $35 general admission or $45 gate-crasher early admittance

September 27 – Yaletown Brewing Caskival – from 11:30 a.m. $20 to taste all 11 casks

September 28 – Bomber Brewing Back Lot Oktoberfest Party – from 2-6.  Bavarian BBQ, music by the Creaking Planks, beer steins and Oktoberfest lager. Tickets on EventBrite for $38.09 – 2 glasses of beer, treat from the grill and take home stein, prizes for dressing up.

October 4 and 5 – Powell RiverOktoberfest.  There is a CAMRA bus tripplanned for this fun festival.  Tickets available through Eventbrite.  $30 for Oktoberfest, $120 for the CAMRA bus transportation (discounts for CAMRA members)

October 24 and 25 – Harrison BeerFestival.  Cask night on Friday, beer tasting festival Saturday afternoon followed by an Oktoberfest party Saturday night, and yes, people do dress up for the party.

October 25 – BC Beer Awards at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Vancouver– hosted by none other than OTC’s Stephen Quinn, this is an awards ceremony for the best in BC beers and a tasting festival for you to try those same beers.  Tickets are $27 currently, and will go up to$32 on October 10th.

Beer Picks:

In honour of the upcoming oktoberfests, some tasty lagers are my picks this week:

Main StreetPilsner – available at the tasting room to drink and have growlers filled, as well as on tap around town.

Red Truck lager – available on tap around town and in cans at the liquor store

Brassneck Klutz kolsch – available at the tasting room to drink and have growlers filled.

And be on the lookout for Oktoberfest beers over the next month.  Refreshing and usually lower in alcohol content than the pumpkin beers we shall be inundated with soon!

on the coast

stephen quinn is back!
i have missed him
so i’m especially looking forward to today’s beer column

cbc radio one
on the coast
5:50 pm
88.1 fm 690 am in vancouver

i’ll be talking about some upcoming local beer festivals and oktoberfests

cbc website

and i made the cbc website again!!!

As people around the world embrace craft beer, beer travel is a growing trend. We do it for wine,  why not beer, asks Rebecca Whyman, a member of Campaign for Real Ale.

Whyman says she would love to travel more often for beer — but when going to every beer festival worldwide is not in your budget, she say you can still get some decent craft beer on your holidays.
Whyman recommends starting with some research on the Internet to find out which breweries are near your destination, and what events are taking place while you’re there. She says a recent trip of hers to Mexico produced some delicious results, and on an upcoming trip she will be going to the Las Vegas Beer Fest.

Before you arrive, you can plug into the local beer scene, and start following beer makers on social media.

World travel map

Travel the world tasting beer (CBC)
 

Beer Advocate is a beer magazine and website that can help you find craft beer locales in cities throughout the U.S. and a few other countries. They also have a very extensive beer events calendar.
Ratebeer.com also has an extensive beer events calendar for the U.S. and some other countries, as well as reviews of breweries, brewpubs, bottle shops and craft beer bars.

Some of Whyman’s friends also take B.C. beer with them when they travel to share with the locals. They are often given beer in return to bring home with them. She says this is a great way to bring B.C. beer to foreign places, making you a beer ambassador.

Beer festivals

If you are actually intentionally chasing beer around the world, more planning is needed. First, you have to research beer festivals and beer-centric cities, find out when their festivals are and then plan your travel around them. One of the oldest beer destinations has been Germany’s Oktoberfest.
A few other festivals of note are the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado in October, and Montreal’s Mondiale de la Biere in June.

Rebecca Whyman

Rebecca Whyman asks why not travel for beer? (CBC)
 

There is a list of beer festivals world-wide on the RealBeer.com website, and a list of Canadian beer festivals on the Canadian Beer News website. Beerfestivals.org is another good site to check.

Festivals aside, beer destinations can also be about the place itself. Whyman recommends travelling to Belgium to try all those great Belgian beers right from the source. Take a tour of the monasteries to learn about the Trappist beers, and bring some of the beer only available on site home with you.
The Westvleteren brewery only sells their beer one case at a time and only by appointment at their door, says Whyman. Achel makes four different styles of beer but only sells one. The only way to try some of these beers is to travel to Belgium.

There are plenty of great beer-centric cities to visit a little closer to home, she adds. Portland Oregon tops that list. Rebecca says she tries to get there at least twice a year as new breweries are cropping up in the city at least as frequently as in Vancouver.

Here are Rebecca’s beer picks for this week, from Belgium and Portland:

  • Chimay Red, White and Blue caps are all available at specialty liquor stores. (Blue is a strong dark ale, Red is a dubbel and White is a trippel)
  • Gigantic IPA is available at specialty liquor stores in 22 oz. bombers.
  • Hopworks organic lager is available at specialty liquor stores in four-packs of cans.

link love

mark it in your calendars:
whistler village beer festival 2014

mike’s craft beer on serving sizes

upcoming beer fest in hamilton on
alas, i will miss it by a mere ten days…

joe wiebe’s piece on victoria’s first craft beer week

iain hill’s new brewery has a name
but they need help choosing a logo

boundary bay brewing is expanding

a new hop is coming! from the breeders of citra and mosaic, two of my faves!!
this is better than christmas!

link love

beer and travel

the tyee on craft beer alliances

walmart looking to double their liquor sales
am i the only one who thinks walmart is the evil empire and will think less of any craft breweries who agree to sell their products there?

upcycling at its best – turning a beer can into a camp stove

new zealand cancels two beer festivals, starts up another

what’s new at the port of vancouver?  apparently it’s craft beer
but the princeton pub may be cutting its nose off to spite its face over the whole thing

brewdog loves dieu du ciel!

women who brew

some love for no-longer nano bridge brewing

link love

get your say in now about bc liquor laws
its time to get what you want, and the best way to do that is to speak up about it
support your local brewers and breweries

jan zeschky’s updated new bc breweries of 2013 piece
read up – there are so many new breweries opening up around the province!

whistler beer festival was a success!

8 simple steps not to be a beer snob douchebag

china joins in on the pandering to the idea that the way to woo women to beer is through low alcohol fruity beers with hello kitty beer.  yes, hello kitty beer
i would be outraged, but frankly its just par for the course and i have bigger things to get worked up about (like the article equating using hello kitty to woo drinkers with the timbers army having its own beer)

auto-brewery syndrome – making your own beer… in your gut
sure, i buy this
ever felt far too yeasty in your guts after a cask festival?  not a stretch from there!

lynne, aka bg canary’s latest article for the bc craft beer news
bc beers are flying south

“TBG ensures that the beer lines and equipment in your favourite craft beer establishment The Beer Guy are clean. We service some of your favourite craft beer bars including Biercraft, and Alibi Room. That’s why we have established the:
Clean
Lines
Earned
Accredited
Restaurant (CLEAR) sticker program. This sticker gives you the peace of mind knowing that the craft draught that you are enjoying is served the way its intended – dispensed through a clean draught system. For more information check out our website.”

link love

need to cool down?
how about some beer ice cream?!

do you really understand ibus?
what international bittering units really mean

do you know the difference between porter and stout?

is the reign of the shaker glass over?

wish you knew when all the beer festivals in canada were being held?
your wish is canadian beer news’ command!

shout out to r&b brewing who’s labels got mentioned twice in this article about the top beer packaging (and to cbc’s ben didier to designed the canadian band beer one)

beer cans making a come back