link love

parallel 49 celebrates after their win at whistler village beer festival

do you want to see growler fills outside of breweries?
here’s camra’s take on why you might actually not want such a thing

need help planning your next beercation?  the travel channel can help

beermebc’s view from gcbf

pumpkin beers – love em or hate em?
i’m on the dislike side… most of them are just too pumpkin pie spice and not enough actual gourd

whistler village beer festival as seen by go-pro

molson lays off staff and blames craft beer
might be the best thing ever to be blamed for!

joe wiebe on the best of craft beer in vancouver

and more on the debate over craft beer in cans

beer column

my notes from last evening’s on the coast with matthew sitting in for stephen:

 

There are so many places to drink beer in Vancouver and surrounding area. And more breweries and tasting rooms expected to open up this year. What sets them apart from each other? 

 

There are breweries that just brew beer for bottling and supplying to restaurants and bars, there are breweries that are combining bottling, kegging and tasting rooms, there are nanobreweries, microbreweries, macrobreweries, there are older breweries and newer breweries and there are brewpubs, just to start the list.

Let’s start on Main Street.  R&B Brewing is one of Vancouver’s oldest breweries, opening their doors in 1997 at their current location at 54 East 4th Avenue at Quebec Street, just West of Main Street, in the old Brewery Creek district of East Vancouver. Rick and Barry, the R and the B in R&B used to brew for the big boys back in the day and left to pursue brewing better beer on their own. And they have thrived. Always pushing for new ways to be part of the community R&B brewed the first ever Pride beer last year – a golden ale called G’Ale – which was also their first beer bottled in 355 ml bottles and sold in six packs. They have since added the Raven Cream Ale and East Side Bitter to their six pack collection. This Spring R&B has rebranded with some great East Van inspired art, they brewed one of the CBC Band Beers – You say Barley we say Rye – and have started doing growler fills on Saturdays. Check their website to see which beers are on offer on any given Saturday, then show up between 2 and 6 with your cash. They have growlers to sell, and will fill other breweries growlers too.

 

Opening soon right on Main Street, at Sixth Avenue, will be Brassneck Brewing, the brainchild of Alibi Room owner Nigel Springthorpe and former Steamworks brewer and multi-award winning Conrad Gmoser. Brassneck will be a brewery, with a tasting room, but their niche market is going to be growlers and kegs. They will not be bottling any of their beers. You’ll have to go to Brassneck to try their beers.

 

Jumping over to a neighbourhood that has seen a surge in the number of breweries in the past year or so we end up in cedar cove.  Where’s cedar cove?   Its the part of East Vancouver’s Grandview Woodland area, making up it’s Northern tip (Franklin Street to Burrard Inlet and Clark Drive to Nanaimo Street), which has seen enormous growth over the past year. There used to just be little Storm Brewing on Commercial Drive at Franklin, then Coal Harbour Brewing Co. moved in, followed by Parallel 49 and nanobrewery Powell Street Brewing. 

 

Powell Street Brewing is located at Powell and Salsbury, a half block west of Victoria Drive and Parallel 49 is a couple of blocks away just East of Victoria Drive on Triumph Street at Semlin. So close you can go visit both in one trip! Be sure to bring your growlers as they both do growler fills. And plan to spend some time trying the brews in their tasting rooms.

 

Powell Street is a nanobrewery, which is a lot like what it sounds like, a very small brewery. A “microbrewery”, is technically defined as any brewery producing less than 300,000 hectolitres (hl) of beer annually. It is generally accepted that a nanobrewery produces less than one tenth of that, or 3000 hl, annually. Powell Street has a 3.5 hectolitre system that can brew 700 litres of beer on a brew day. With numbers as small as that, they run out of beer from time to time, so check their website before you go visit to make sure they’ll be open and serving beer. They are open, when they have beer, from Wednesday through Saturday from 1:00 until 7:00. Currently they are out of beer – they’ll be back on Saturday with their award-winning Old Jalopy Pale ale, the best beer in Canada for 2013 – no wonder it keeps running out!

 

Alternatively, Parallel 49 Brewing up the street began with a 300 hl system, expanded seven times over its first year in business (happy anniversary btw, which was May 11th) and now boasts a 1,130 hectolitre system. They have no plans to stop expanding. You can find Parallel 49 beers throughout the city, in 650 ml bottles, in six packs, on tap, on cask – its everywhere! My favourite place to drink it though is the tasting room, right there at the brewery. And the tasting room is always busy – Vancouver has definitely embraced this new endeavour. Parallel 49 is open daily from noon until 9:00 p.m. for free tasters, sales of 12oz sleeves, growler fills and bottle sales.

Beer picks:

– The East Side Bitter from R&B brewing

– The Old Jalopy Pale Ale from Powell Street

– The Lord of the Hops from Parallel 49

 

And for an update on the tasting room situation in Vancouver, visit Paddy Treavor’s blog

on the coast

my notes from last night’s beer column on cbc radio one’s on the coast:

and we’re back with more liquor law news this week.

alas, this time it is not good news for beer lovers in the province

i talked about some new liquor laws last show. i was very excited about the loosening of the tied-house rule and cautiously optimistic about the opportunity for breweries to apply for tasting rooms and special event venues. it looked like the province was finally making some positive changes to archaic and overly restrictive liquor laws – most of which hadn’t changed significantly since the repeal of prohibition.

alas, my joy was short-lived. i am still happy about the progress made, but we seem to be in a one step forward, two steps backwards situation.

Rich Coleman and the BC Liberals, through the BC Liquor Distribution Branch, have decided that they need to collect even more tax on craft beer by increasing the markup on Growler fills. There is still a lot of confusion around this change though. Paddy Treavor (beer blogger about town and past-President of CAMRA) has spent a whole lot of time and effort corresponding with the Liquor Distribution Branch to get the details of the taxation change. What he has found out has been news to many brewers , (see Rebecca of Crannog Ales’ Facebook post yesterday) and it would appear that current rules have not been evenly applied. But first, an ode to the growler to ensure that we all understand what i’m talking about here, and what the big deal is.

i have spoken previously about growlers, those wonderous 2 litre vessels that you can take to a brewery or brewpub to get filled and then take them home, or to a party, to consume. currently you can purchase growlers and get them filled at four establishments in vancouver, steamworks, yaletown brewpub, parallel 49 and powell street brewery, plus central city in surrey and bridge brewing in north vancouver. opening in 2013 will be several other locations for growler fills.

what’s so special about buying your own big glass bottle and taking it to be filled at a brewery? and how did growlers get their name?

Growlers are glass jugs which hold 1.89 litres (64 fl.oz) of beer, which is slightly under six bottles of beer.

• Growlers are environmentally friendly as the bottle can be refilled again and again rather than being recycled
• Growlers cut the mileage that your beer needs to be transported – reducing the carbon footprint
• Growlers are filled with fresh beer
• getting your growler filled enables you to engage with the people who have made your beer, sometimes even the brewer themself
• access to seasonal and special releases that might not make it to liquor stores.
• Growlers are a great size for sharing, especially for taking to parties
• Often filling a growler is less expensive than buying bottles or cans at the liquor store

as for why they’re called growlers, there is a myth that takes us back to the early 1900s, when beer was bought directly from the local brewery. Beer drinkers would bring their own buckets, fill them with beer, and seal the bucket with a lid. Then, when you went to drink the beer and removed the lid, the sound of the carbon dioxide escaping created a “growl”, and the buckets became known as “Growlers”. (source)

growler culture is on the rise in all over – i introduced my mother to the joys of growlers in the Fall when I was in Ontarioand she is now addicted! With the increasing popularity of growlers and the new liquor laws that came into effect on friday which in theory allow for more breweries to offer growler fills, the government sure picked an opportune time to increase taxation.

So, what is this new taxation rule?

Paddy Treavor confirmed with the Liquor Distribution Branch that currently, when you make your first growler purchase, the brewery pays the LDB the packaged cost per-litre markup. Every fill thereafter is considered as draught and the brewery pays the LDB the lower draught rate. For most craft breweries in BC, who fall in the 15,000 Hectalitre and less category, the first growler fill, is currently marked up $1.04/L (packaged), which totals $1.87 per growler ($1.04/L x 1.8). Subsequent fills, are then marked up at $.72/L (draught) totaling $1.30 ($0.72/L x 1.8), $0.57 less than the original purchase. Under the new rules, which come into effect in April, all growler sales will be marked up at the higher, packaged price, no matter if it is the first sale or the 100th refill. That means smaller breweries, under 15,000HL, will be charged the extra $0.57 on refills, a 30% markup increase. With some breweries averaging close to 1,000 growler sales some months, this increase quickly begins to add up to big dollar amounts. But does the brewery eat that increase come April? Or will they risk upsetting their customers by passing along the increase to them?

CAMRA Vancouver has launched a campaign to “Save the Growler“. The campaign features a petition to the provincial government “to remove the discriminatory new “Growler Tax” on craft beer”. You can sign the petition on their website, camravancouver.ca, in its first 24 hours the petition attracted 200 signatures, and by the time you hear my voice, the number will be at 700 in only five days.

While a 57 cent difference doesn’t sound like a lot, it is just another increase in the cost of fun in Vancouver. While I don’t think this is on a scale with homelessness, clean water or pipelines, I do think it is important to take a stand against taxes that will affect small businesses in our community. Governments should be finding ways to build communities rather than finding new ways to tax us all. So I encourage you to sign CAMRA’s petition.

Adam Chatburn, President of CAMRA BC – Vancouver Chapter said, “The fact that this tax targets smaller craft brewers who have invested heavily in growlers and growler filling equipment is particularly unfair. It’s hypocritical for a government purporting to support green initiatives to punish consumers and small businesses for pursuing environmentally responsible behaviour.”

Paddy Treavor, CAMRA Vancouver’s last President said in his beer blog: “I cannot see how some of the nano-breweries, who rely on growler sales as part of their business plan, would have any choice but to raise their retail prices eventually. This increased markup, which really only impacts craft breweries (how many growlers of Molson Canadian do you see out there), shows once again that the government is not being very supportive of the craft beer industry as they continue to make it difficult for these smaller breweries to operate, be profitable and grow. “

Beer Picks:

Driftwood Brewing’s 20 Pounder double IPA is back. you can get it in 650ml bottles at specialty liquor stores, and on cask and tap at several beer joints around town, but hurry, its a limited release. 9%

Gigantic Brewing’s The End of Reason – this is a belgian-style petit quad and its 8.3%, available on tap at St. Augustine’s and in bottles at specialty liquor stores

both of those are big beers and limited releases, so get them quickly, but drink them slowly!

and for St. Patrick’s day, how about Russell Brewing’s Luck of the Irish – a red malt forward beverage perfect for celebrating all things Irish