apparently this summer is ‘pub crawl summer’ for me
two crawls over two weekends (and one last month) – i guess this is what i do when i’m not galivanting out of town on the weekend
and i gotta tell ya, i like it!
on the long weekend i went on a crawl organized by a friend and we hit a whopping 7 places (loosely calling them all pubs…)
some peeps continued on to an 8th, but i tapped out after 7
(i’m not old, i’m sensible… yeah, sensible, that’s it)
where did we go?
parallel 49
odd society
storm brewing
bomber brewing
windjammer restaurant
biercraft
stateside craft
(some to st. augustine’s)
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| odd society |
so what was the mission statement of this particular crawl?
get hammered on a sunny saturday afternoon?
well, that may have happened, but the purpose was to show off the incredible bounty of craft beverages within walking distance of our east van homes
3 breweries – parallel 49 tasting room, bomber brewing tasting room and storm brewing that has no tasting room, but they do offer samples and growler fills
1 distillery – odd society tasting room
a plethora of craft beer selling establishments – biercraft, stateside craft, st. augustine’s just to name the three we stopped at, all on commercial drive
and windjammer restaurant – just cuz they have the best deal on fish and chips (their beer list leaves a whole lot to be desired, though)
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| storm brewing |
i go to these places quite regularly
they are my neighbourhood watering holes
and they are all great places to get a drink and socialize
not everyone has tried them though, and this was an exercise in introducing people to what is in their own backyard
have i mentioned how much i love that i can walk to all of these places from my home
some of them without even breaking a sweat?
(and how much i’m looking forward to powell street brewing opening their new bigger space very soon, and to both off the rails and strange fellows breweries opening later this year, adding three tasting rooms to my local list)
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| biercraft commercial |
beers and spirits were tasted
growlers were filled
food was eaten
socializing was enjoyed
it was a damned fine way to spend a saturday afternoon and evening
if you haven’t done an east van pub crawl yet, i strongly suggest you get out there and do one
the second “pub crawl” was more spontaneous
i needed to try out new places for my upcoming column in the bc craft beer news and i had heard good things about jackalope on hastings street
so after dragging the usual suspects out for dim sum on sunday morning
(and i would tell you where i go for dim sum, but it is already full on sunday mornings and i don’t need the competition for a table!)
i further dragged them over to jackalope for a beverage or two
once you get people drinking at noon on a sunday there is just no chance left of a productive day so we decided to carry on carrying on and also visited parallel 49 and stateside craft
stateside craft has happy hour from 3-7 on sundays ($5 beers) and live jazz, so that’s where we whiled away the evening
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| live sunday evening jazz at stateside craft |
jackalope and stateside craft are fairly new places
neither place was particularly busy on a sunday afternoon
but both offered us delicious libations and a nice atmosphere to enjoy our socializing
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| deeelicious libations at jackalope |
i have mentioned stateside several times already
it is my new home away from home
they still have kinks to work out, but i really like it there
if you’re on the drive, i suggest checking it out
EDIT: i would suggest stopping by jackalope as well, except you can’t
since i was there on the weekend they have closed their door for renovations and management changes (i swear, it was nothing I did!)
i hope the renos don’t include losing the fun artwork
rumour also has it that the chef has left
i didn’t eat there (too full of dim sum) but i heard great things about the food, so i hope they manage to get someone else who can cook fine southern cuisine
and keep their really great tasting caesar…
i want to support local businesses who want to bring us good beer, but sometimes their growing pains make that difficult
jackalope re-opens on august 20th
i will check out the new jackalope and i can only hope i like it as much as the old one
(note: this also means that my review of jackalope’s will not run in the upcoming bc craft beer news)
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| from the jackalope washroom |
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