Archive for July, 2009
Maui Brewing company
Thursday, July 30th, 2009 | Beer | 1 Comment
Gavin, a coworker of mine, just returned from Hawaii and was thoughtful enough to bring back some of the local beer. Gavin is a good man. More of my friends should learn from his shining example and bring me beer back from places. I just finished a can (labelled as welcoming me to the microcanning revolution!) each of CoConut Porter and Big Swell IPA from Maui Brewing. They were both quite delicious beers, even after overheating in my car yesterday in the epic Vancouver heat. Like Erik, I am not a huge fan of fruit beers, but I really enjoy a good Coconut flavor. The coconut adds a subtle sweetness that really rounds out a porter. The Big Swell IPA was quite good also, full of fresh hoppy flavor.
I’d never thought of Hawaii as a beer destination and I was surprised to find that Hawaii has some really excellent craft beer. I am going to Hawaii soon (when your Dad offers you free accommodation and you find cheap flights, you go!) and might have to make some detours to a few of the local breweries. The BeerAdvocate BeerFly directory for Hawaii will guide me on my quest to find deliciously fresh craft beer in Hawaii. Me, sea turtles, beer…heaven.
Cheers,
Chris
Summer Beer
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | Beer | No Comments
Once again, it is hot in Vancouver, and even hotter in the Fraser Valley. I’m not complaining, the heat is nice, but it is hot. All meals are now cooked outside on the grill, the oven is officially off limits, and all beer must be served cold. This kind of heat leaves no room for cellar temperature ales – if a darker beer is a must, I recommend pairing it with some cool vanilla ice cream to make a beer float.
Lager, Alt/Kolsch, Blonde Ale and the occasional Pale Ale are all far more affordable than buying a brand new air conditioner, plus they are far tastier. Here are a couple of great summer beers that may help you keep cool.
- Surgenor Steam Donkey Lager. A great pilsner style lager.
- Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat Ale. I was have never been all that fond of fruit beers, Lost Coast has made me a believer.
- Mission Springs Blonde Bombshell. I have found there to be some consistency issues from bottle to bottle, but when it is right, it is a delicious blonde ale.
- Yaletown Brewing Raspberry Wheat Ale. If you find yourself in Yaletown it is well worth a taste. I’m not sure how long this one will be around for, so don’t wait too long.
- Mt. Begbie High Country Kolsch. A great example of a German kolsch.
- Central City Brewing Spring Board Lager. A well priced craft brewed lager, Central City’s brewmaster, Gary Lohin, can do no wrong.
Feel free to comment on any of your favorite summer beers.
Cheers,
Erik
Surgenor Brewing
Monday, July 27th, 2009 | Beer | 2 Comments
Surgenor Brewing is a new brewery from Comox BC. Their first two beers are just finding their way to the shelves of the lower mainland’s better beer stores. I’d heard about Surgenor a while back and was anxiously awaiting the arrival of their beer, which I managed to procure last week. Surgenor brews two beers, Steam Donkey Lager and Red House Ale. I bought and enjoyed drinking both, but I really liked the Red House Ale, which I found to have a malty sweetness as well as a nice level of hop bitterness. I found it to be a well balanced and enjoyable beer that I would buy again. Well played Surgenor, your initial offerings have me looking forward to further beer releases!
Aluminum Surgenor bottles emptied by me
What I find really interesting about Surgenor is their choice of packaging. They bottle their beer in aluminum, yes bottle. From a beer protection and shipping standpoint, the light blocking and light weight aluminum is an ideal material choice, but then why not can? I’m guessing that this packaging is more part of a marketing strategy than anything else. For Surgenor, brewing good beer is just the start. They need to get noticed to stick around, and aluminum bottles might be just the gimmick they need. Personally, I really liked the feel of the aluminum bottle. I hope it works for them, but the only way to ensure that Surgenor makes it is for us beer fans to start buying their beer.
Cheers,
Chris
A couple of events
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 | Events | 5 Comments
There are some cool beer events happening in the lower mainland in the near future. I found out about them via the CAMRA Vancouver email list and the CAMRA Vancouver Facebook group. If you want to know the latest cool beer goings on, I suggest you join both the list and the group. However, I wouldn’t stop there; I’d consider becoming a full fledged CAMRA member. The $25 fee will quickly be recouped in savings and other perks, trust me, do it, join. Now for the events:
- Big Ridge in Surrey is hosting a Brewmaster’s Dinner on Tuesday the 28th at 7PM. The dinner costs $40 and features four delicious courses, each paired with a tasty big ridge brew. Learn more.
- It is once again time for the annual Dix Summer Caskival, where many brewers bring a cask or two of their creations for us to enjoy in one spot. The Caskival is August 8th from 12PM to 5PM and costs a mere $20. I have not attended a Dix Caskival yet, but plan to make this my first. Check out the beer lineup and other info here.
Cheers,
Chris
Beer Ice Cream and other tidbits
Sunday, July 19th, 2009 | Beer | 3 Comments
I went to La Casa Gelato in Vancouver yesterday. This famed ice cream joint has 218 flavors in store, and I’m told they have even more flavors in reserve. I happened to notice one flavor in particular that I just had to try, that being Guinness Draught Beer Sorbetto. I was surprised to find that it tasted exactly like Guinness, not generally resembling stout or beer, but very specifically like Guinness! I’ll be honest, I didn’t love it, but finding this beer so convincingly adapted to ice cream got me thinking. Can I make my own beer ice cream out of one of my favorite beers? This article is the best I’ve found on making your own beer ice cream, something that I’ll have to try. If I have any success, I’ll definitely post my results.
Guinness Draught Beer Sorbetto from La Casa Gelatto
Some other tidbits:
- Erik convinced me (wasn’t hard) to go to Brewery Creek with him yesterday. It’s a good thing we went because we managed to snag the last few Great Canadian Beer Festival tickets. I was going to wait until Monday, which would have been bad. I’m hearing that all tickets available in the lower mainland are now sold out. If you want to go to the GCBF this year, you should get on the case now.
- We also hit up Bosa Foods. It was my first time there and I was very impressed. It is the best gourmet food store I’ve been to in the lower mainland. I was particularly impressed by the butcher shop. I’ve previously written about beer and meat and beer and chicken; I do believe I’ve finally found the place to buy quality meat. They sell organic free range redbro chickens from Polderside farms, as well as a great selection of lamb, pork, and beef cuts. I was impressed by the color (deep red, not bright red), texture (moist, but not wet looking), and marbling of the beef steaks, as well as the colour of the pork (pinkish, not grey). I will definitely be buying my meat there from now on.
Have a great rest of the weekend.
Cheers,
Chris
Beer Marketing
Friday, July 17th, 2009 | Beer | 5 Comments
To follow Chris’s previous post, I thought it would be worth while sharing my two cents on beer marketing. For those who do not know, I am a marketer by day and a passionate beer drinker by night. Small businesses, including many craft breweries, often have an under funded marketing department – often meaning one guy runs the entire show. As a marketer I feel the pain that these beer marketers go through; working on a shoe string budget is tough, but a creative individual should be able to put together and execute an effective marketing plan on a tight budget. As a consumer, I have little patience for poor marketing – especially poor beer marketing.
Sadly, with the sheer amount of information available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection, the general public can easily be misled by marketers trying to sell a product. In a world ripe with information, the truth can be hard to find.
As our chosen domain name may suggest, we love good beer. Both Chris and I welcome press releases from breweries both large and small, but to receive our support I suggest reviewing the following guidelines.
- Good products sell themselves. The best marketing strategy is to offer a good product. Do not in any way allow a marketing strategy to compromise the quality of the product. If beer is the product, do not use green bottles or clear bottles – the beer will soon taste like a skunk. I cannot imagine any accomplished brewmasters choosing clear bottles over brown bottles; they know full well that their beer will taste like a skunk after being exposed to light – who drinks beer in the dark? But I can see a marketer deciding to differentiate their beer from the others by packing their own brand of beer in a clear bottle or a bottle tinted to match a corporate brand. To those in the beer marketing world – you know who you are, please refrain. To consumers, do not put up with this shoddy packaging. Contact the offending breweries and let them know you will not put up with this any longer.
- Size does not matter. Many craft breweries will lead consumers to believe that their beer is superior to macro brewed beer simply because their beer is brewed in small quantities. This is just not true. Many small breweries produce terrible beer and some large breweries produce fantastic beer. Craft beer does not mean quality, craft beer means small quantity. Do not reach for a six pack simply because it is labeled “craft beer” reach for a six pack because it tastes good.
- Be passionate. In order to create good beer and successfully promote good beer the entire staff at a brewery must be passionate about beer. Beer drinkers are some of the most passionate and dedicated people I have met. Beer drinkers even go so far as to form clubs with the primary goal of promoting good beer to the world. If a passionate beer drinker discovers a tasty new beer, it can be guaranteed they will tell all of their friends. Beer marketers: if a press release is sent out to a wide array of beer writers, and they send a question in response to the press release, please respond to the email. If no email is sent back in response to a question, all I can assume is that the original sender could care less about their product – they just want to achieve sales targets.
Sybil from Steam Whistle, please do not take this as an attack on your beer or your marketing approach – I happen to enjoy Steam Whistle Pilsner, but I would appreciate a brown bottle version. The only real rule to live by is to drink good beer. Not beer that marketers tell you is good, but beer that your taste buds tell you is good.
Cheers,
Erik
Thanks for the Spam PR Guy
Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | Breweries | 3 Comments
Yesterday I received a couple of emails (spam) from the PR firm on behalf of Steam Whistle Brewing. For those who don’t know, Steam Whistle is an Ontario based brewery who brew a pilsner and only a pilsner. Steam Whistle Pilsner is sometimes available in BC at the better beer stores (Brewery Creek for example), but the average BC beer drinker won’t have heard of it, much less tasted it. It is a tasty pilsner though, a beer I would recommend to you Bud Light Lime drinkers out there, and it is a shame it is not more widely available out west.
What I want to know is, why did Steam Whistle waste their money on hiring these PR guys? Neither email I received was addressed to me and both were clearly spam, likely sent to every beer related website in Canada. Also, the first email was an invite to a pub crawl in Toronto on Thursday (I’ll be there) and the second was promoting a contest, where the link to the contest in the email didn’t even work (the correct link is on Steam Whistle’s website and it looks like a good contest worth winning). I have nothing against Steam Whistle, but I do feel like this means of marketing is a problem in the beer industry. Why hire an ineffectual PR firm to promote Steam Whistle Pilsner in BC when it is hardly available here? In my opinion, using the PR money (PR firms aren’t cheap) to get their beer into BC liquor stores would be a better strategy. An even better strategy would be to have Steam Whistle employees who know and love their beer establish real relationships with prominent beer bloggers (probably not us, but we’d be friends with them anyway). Why pay a passionless suit when there is this whole free internet thing out there that companies can use to reach people with?
Cheers,
Chris
Great Canadian Beer Festival Tickets on sale
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 | Beer | No Comments
The Great Canadian Beer Festival is taking place on September 11th and 12th this year in Victoria (where it always is). I have never been to a GCBF, but plan on making this year my first one. I’ve heard it is awesome and I’ve also heard that tickets sell out fast. If you want to go, make sure you grab tickets soon after they go on sale this Saturday, July 18th. Brewery Creek and Central City are two of the fine lower mainland establishments selling tickets. The beer lineup from last year looks pretty solid, so best to make your arrangements sooner than later. If you do make it, make sure to say hi to us, we’ll be the ones silly walking around the grounds.
Cheers,
Chris
Nothing to Hide?
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 | Beer | 1 Comment
When a guy buys a new car where does he keep it when he’s not driving it? In the garage of course. A shinny new car is worth hiding – thieves are everywhere and the suns damaging rays should be kept to a minimum.
Now think about this MGD commercial for a moment:
Nothing to hide, or nothing worth hiding?
Erik
Beer and Chicken
Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | Food and Recipes | 4 Comments
A while back I wrote about Beer and Meat and I have once again started pouring over the The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I picked up the book recently to learn about the cuts of lamb (Erik and I are splitting a whole one!), but, having just watched Jamie Oliver’s Fowl Dinners, I started reading about chickens instead. It turns out that the average chicken has it pretty rough. Some facts I learned about chicken from Jamie and Hugh:
- The average westerner eats 15 chickens a year.
- The average chicken lives for 41 days before slaughter.
- During those 41 days, the broiler house (where the chickens live) is not cleaned.
- Of the chickens we eat, 98% are intensively farmed (i.e. live at Chicken Auschwitz and never see the sun).
- Between 6-30% of a batch of broiler chickens die before slaughter.
- Chicken density in a broiler house can reach 38kg per square meter (at 2kg per chicken, that means almost twenty chickens in a square meter!).
- The Ross Cobb chicken breed (the breed we mostly eat) is genetically obese and can’t reach sexual maturity without being starved so it doesn’t get too fat and die.
- Around 25% of broiler chickens can’t walk because they get too fat and don’t have enough room to walk around and develop muscles. Ever had a drumstick where the foot end was a bit black? That is a result of acid from the chicken’s own feces seeping into the bone because the chicken was walking on its knees.
Pretty gross, eh? I was shocked to learn about how bad chickens really have it. I really recommend watching Fowl Dinners for a crash course in chicken provenance. Jamie even slaughters a chicken in front of the live studio audience, who looked on with abject horror. I don’t understand why we pay to watch people die in movies, but can’t tolerate watching our food die. If we are eating 15 chickens a year each, we should be prepared to slaughter a chicken. Obviously all non crazy people won’t enjoy taking the life of an animal, but not being able to do it yourself is the ultimate in hypocrisy.
I also learned from Jamie and Hugh that happy, healthy chickens who are able to grow slowly and vary their diet with natural forage taste better! I can attest to this first hand. My wife recently acquired a chicken from one of her coworker’s hobby farm. The chicken was free range, organically fed (no medicated protein soup), and likely led a pretty good life. We cooked the bird using Erik’s Beer Butt Chicken recipe and it was the most delicious chicken I’ve ever had in my entire life. Here’s the recipe:
- Season the whole chicken (skin on) with salt and pepper. Chop some rosemary and thyme and rub it on the dry chicken. Take a few rosemary springs and shove it under the breast skin.
- Drink one and a half beers (minimum) – leave half of one beer in the can and put some of the fresh herbs used in the rub into the can.
- Get a chicken stand and put the beer can into it. Shove the stand with the can in it into the chicken’s butt.
- Turn one side of your BBQ on and leave the other side off – you want a convection oven effect. Once up to 350F put the bird on the off side of the grill. Cook for one and a half hours or when you hit 165F internal temperature. Rotate the bird once or twice during the cooking process.
You will not regret trying the above recipe. Make sure you drink at least one and a half beers! You’ll also find that your chicken will taste better if it had a good life. I implore you to ignore most chicken products unless you can gain some assurance that they had a good life. Even if you don’t like chickens as birds (they are pretty dumb), think of how great a happy chicken will taste!
Cheers,
Chris