Archive for December, 2009
Cool Vancouver Beer Events in early 2010
Saturday, December 26th, 2009 | Events | 1 Comment
I expected to enjoy many good holiday beers this Christmas season, but instead my beer drinking and merry making have been derailed by a gastrointestinal virus. Luckily for me, I’ll have plenty of chance to make up for lost time in the new year what with three cool events coming up.
- Feast of The Five Firkins – The Whip restaurant hosts a five course feast with each course paired with a wonderful craft beer. This is the third annual feast and I’ve heard each of the previous were wonderful. The feast will be held January 10th and tickets are available from The Whip for $85 each.
- Belgianfest 2010 – The Washington Beer Commission presents the first ever Belgianfest, a craft beer event featuring Belgian style beers brewed by Washington craft brewers. The event will be held Saturday, January 23rd at Georgetown Studios at The Engine Room in Seattle (close enough to Vancouver). Tickets are $30.
- Beer Wars Screening – I don’t have many details on this one, but I’ve heard there will be a screening of Beer Wars at District319 in Vancouver on January 17th.
I hope your holidays have been better than mine thus far.
Cheers,
Chris
New Book: Drinking Vancouver
Monday, December 21st, 2009 | Beer | 5 Comments
I know Christmas is just a few short days away, but if you wanted to get me something (you probably do) and haven’t yet, then I’d be all over this new book called Drinking Vancouver: 100+ Great Bars in the City and Beyond. It is a book about drinking in Vancouver! Not that I really need it, but I’m sure I could find a few spots in the book that I haven’t heard or thought of yet.
The book is written by John Lee, author of the Lonely Planet city guides for Vancouver, which means he knows these parts and is a good writer (even better than us). I’ve heard that John pays special attention to beer and many of our illustrious brewers, which can only be a good thing for our local beer scene. If you’ve been wanting to learn more about beer in Vancouver and wanted a guide, then buy this book and get drinking. I do believe the book comes out in January, but it is already available online from Chapters. I am definitely going to check this book out, even if nobody gets it for me for Christmas.
Cheers,
Chris
How do people find LoveGoodBeer.com?
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | Beer | 3 Comments
In the vein of my last post where I listed our top ten posts of 2009, I thought it might also be interesting to post our top keywords. These keywords are what people typed into Google to find us. I’ve read that over 90% of clicks from Google come from the first search results page and over 75% come from the top three listings, which means we likely rank pretty high for the keywords below. This also means that any companies or brands listed need to work on their online presence and SEO. I hope you find this list as interesting as I did:
- love good beer
- ozarks famous bbq
- stanley park 1897 amber ale
- brockton ipa
- ozarks restaurant langley
- good beer
- bud light lime
- sorghum beer
- beer cheddar soup
- beer butt chicken
- rickard’s dark
- http://lovegoodbeer.com
- rickards dark
- bud light lime calories
- cellaring beer
- greek beer
- stanley park beer
- bowen island brewery
- turning point brewery
- stanley park amber ale
- russell brewing ipa
- bud light lime sucks
- central city ipa
- ozarks bbq langley
- hells gate beer
Cheers,
Chris
One Year of Love Good Beer
Sunday, December 13th, 2009 | Beer | 5 Comments
It’s true, we’ve been around for a year now. We started this blog because we both love beer, were a bit bored, and wanted to do something fun. We’ve definitely learned a lot and our blog has led to some interesting opportunities. Admittedly, we didn’t really know what we were getting into and weren’t very good in the beginning. I think we’ve improved a lot though and the reports confirm we’ve decreased our coefficient of suck 76%, while effectively doubling awesomeness. While that may be made up, I can say with certainty that we drank a lot of beer and had some really good times this year.
It turns out the we have made a bit of an impact on the blogosphere. Google tells us that we’ve had almost 11000 unique visitors and 27000 page views, with daily traffic steadily growing from next to nothing in the beginning to today’s respectable levels. Who knew anyone would care to read our ramblings? Most of our traffic comes from organic Google search results. It turns out that we are pretty good at SEO, enough that Erik and I continually find our own blog in search results (irritatingly so, since we are usually looking for actual information ex. Google ‘caskival’). We’ve also seen a lot of traffic from referring sites and less and less people accessing us directly. My interpretation of this shift is that our friends no longer feel obliged to read our blog, but we are getting more traffic from the intertubes at large. Stupid jerk friends. Just kidding, I need you people to drink beer with.
We wrote a 191 posts last year, which is more than one every two days. Some of them were good, some were not very good, some made people angry (sorry), some were fun to write (wooo!), and some got us free beer (double woooo!). Looking back, it was interesting to see what posts garnered the most attention, where Erik was particularly good at picking hot topics. Below are our top ten posts from last year, six from Erik and four from me.
Top 10 Posts of 2009
- Bud Light Lime is an abomination
- Ozarks Famous BBQ
- Beer and Meat
- The Beer Cellar: how to cellar beer and why
- Calorie Content of Beer?
- Stanley Park 1897 Amber
- Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies
- Turning Point Brewery – the inside scoop
- Real Trappist Beer
- Review: Hells Gate Pale Ale
I hope we have another good year so I can write another post like this next December. Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Chris
Turns out I share an office with Chris of Truecask.com
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 | Beer | 1 Comment
Last Friday I was told we’d be having an afternoon wine tasting at work. Being rather busy and not being able to drink much (what with the lengthy commute vast approaching), I wasn’t particularly enthused. But what the heck, right? Missing an hour or two of work on a Friday afternoon for some wine snobbery can’t be all bad. The tasting was put on by our neighbors with whom we split an office. We’d just moved in and I hadn’t met many people from the other company, save the pit bull who tries to bite my nuts off every time I go fill up my water bottle in the shared kitchen. Turns out he’s a friendly dog once you get to know him, but he takes a while to warm up to developers. The owner of said pit bull ended up being Chris Bjerrisgaard, fellow beer enthusiast and author of local blog Truecask.com. What are the odds? Pretty good actually.
Chris schools us in beer
Anyway, Chris brought some beer along to the wine tasting and schooled my colleagues in the finer points of beer. He brought along Driftwood Farmhand Ale (a Belgian Saison in style) and Storm’s 12 year aged fruit lambic, two fine beers. It was a pleasure to meet you in person Chris and thanks for sharing your goods!
Cheers,
Chris
Dix Winter Extreme Caskival 2009
Monday, December 7th, 2009 | Events | 1 Comment
The 2009 edition of the Dix Winter Extreme Caskival took place this past Saturday and was a rousing success. There were twenty or so casks of delicious beer on hand, locally brewed and delivered fresh by our illustrious local brewers. I do believe I enjoyed a 4oz tasting glass of each, but I can’t be sure because my memory of the latter hours of the event are now a bit difficult to grasp. You see, most of the beers at Dix were higher in alcohol than your typical fair at an average of 8% ABV or so. Consumption of each available beer resulted in the impairment of my mental faculties. I apologize to those I may have bumped into or spilled beer on, my bad. Although I’m hardly to blame for these transgressions considering that Dix was absolutely packed with craft beer lovers. Future Caskivals may requires a larger venue, which is good news in my books.
Onto the beer, my favorite was the wildly creative Mole Poblano Ale from Storm. It was brewed with chipotle peppers, ancho peppers and chocolate! I would never have thought to combine mole and beer, nor would I expect the combination to taste good. However, Storm brewer James Walton managed to marry the two (both complicated and intensive concoctions in their own right) into a spicy, chocolaty winter brew. I’ll admit that I didn’t find the Mole Poblano Ale to be the best tasting beer, but it got my vote for being the most interesting. I was also very fond of the Taylor’s Crossing Christmas Cake, which did indeed taste like Christmas cake. This beer won the brewers choice award with R&B’s Auld Nick taking home the people’s choice.
I took this one crappy iPhone picture well into the event when I realized I wanted to blog but wouldn’t have any pictures. Once again, I fail.
Here is a list of the other beers that were at the event:
- Central City: Imperial IPA
- Crab Alley: Dead Pine IPA
- Dead Frog: Oaked Winter Warmer
- DIX: Barleywine
- DIX: Imperial Stout
- DIX: IPA
- Driftwood: Blackstone Porter
- Granville Island: Jolly Abbot Belgian-Style Tripel
- Howe Sound: Father John’s Winter Ale
- Longwood: Doppelbock (9.5%, Aged 8 months)
- R&B: Auld Nick Winter Ale
- Russell: Spiced Winter Warmer
- Swans: Legacy Ale (a Barleywine. Aged on oak for the past year)
- Spinnakers: IPA (charged with sweet wort and dry-hopped with Magnum hops)
- Storm: Mole Poblano Ale (Chipotle and Ancho peppers with chocolate)
- Taylor’s Crossing: Festbier (a strong Vienna lager spiced with Juniper berries)
- Taylor’s Crossing: Christmas Cake (an amber ale flavoured with molasses, traditional brandied fruits, and Christmas spices)
- Whistler Brewhouse: Dave’s Damn Dangerously Drinkable Double IPA (8.5%, 70 IBUs, Dry-Hopped with Cascades)
- Yaletown: Le Nez Rouge (a Belgian-style tripel. Iain’s choice of yeast results in a spicy, clove-like character)
- Yaletown: Oud Bruin (Iain’s pièce de résistance. A Flemish sour brown fermented with 6 cultures in total. Aged on oak since January!)
For more info and likely some post game recap (including non crappy pictures), check out the event’s Facebook page. For those of you who didn’t attend, keep your eyes open for the next caskival (likely the summer version in August); this is the best beer festival Vancouver’s got.
Cheers,
Chris
Alibi Room Celebrates 100th beer list
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | Beer, Events | 2 Comments
That’s right, 100th beer list, not beer, but beer list. I find that impressive and am planning on stopping by for the celebration, which is tomorrow, Thursday the 3rd of December at the Alibi Room. I’d heard rumors that an event of this sort might be taking place and the CAMRA newsletter confirms:
This Thursday will be the 100th rotation of the Alibi Room’s beer list. To mark the occasion owner Nigel Springthorpe will be replacing the regular lineup with a special selection featuring great current BC beers along with signature beers from many BC Brewers. Some kegs will be new, others may be kegs collected over the years and aged in the Alibi Room’s cellar. Highlights include a cask of Driftwood’s wet-hopped Sartori Harvest IPA, the last of Swan’s Legacy-Ale barleywine, and Steamworks’ Blitzen & Yaletown’s Le Nez Rouge Belgian-style tripels.
As if that wasn’t enough, The Alibi Room will be releasing the aged bottles they’ve collected and aged in their cellar.
I am pretty excited to give the fresh hopped Sartori Harvest IPA from Driftwood a try. I missed out on the bottled release when I was away in October, but the cask version promises to be even better. One friend of mine has gone on record as saying it is the best IPA he’s ever tasted and he’s a certified hophead. Should be good times, be sure to stop by if you can make it.
Cheers,
Chris
Brewdog Brews World’s Strongest Beer at 32% ABV
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | Beer | 7 Comments
Brewdog, a very young Scottish brewery, has brewed the world’s strongest beer at 32% ABV. I really like Brewdog, mostly because they brew very interesting beers and have very funny labels. You’ll know what I mean if you get your hands of any of their beers, four of which are available at Brewery Creek in Vancouver.
If you are into beer, or even if you’ve read the paper lately, you might have already heard of Tactical Nuclear Penguin, the new 32% ABV beer. What you might know and might find interesting, is how they made it. Turns out they took some of their Paradox Imperial Stout that had already aged in oak barrels for 15 months and froze it at an ice cream factory, periodically draining off the unfrozen liquid. Alcohol freezes at a much lower temperature than water, meaning the unfrozen liquid was higher and higher in alcohol content each time it was drained. Check out this hilarious video of the process I found on Brewdog’s blog:
The question remains, why would Brewdog try to make the world’s strongest beer? The answer is probably because they could and were curious, which is reason enough for me. Or maybe it was for the attention, which they have received in spades. I, for one, am not sure I’d like Tactical Nuclear Penguin. That isn’t to say I won’t buy some if I can get some. I think I’d probably find it a bit too alcoholic, which is likely considering that I find some 12-15% ABV beers too alcoholic, where 15% is the highest ABV beer I’ve ever tried.
Cheers,
Chris