Tag Archives: driftwood

Voting for the CAMRA Vancouver 2012 Beer Awards

Every year, for the past seven years at least, CAMRA Vancouver puts on a local beer awards.  These awards are a little different in that they are voted on by CAMRA Vancouver members like you and me (hopefully you).  The award winners are announced and given out in front of the boisterous (drunk) membership at the CAMRA Vancouver AGM, coming up Sunday, January 13th.  If you’re not a CAMRA Vancouver member yet, sign up for the sweet benefits and camaraderie and mostly the sweet benefits.

This is who I think should win this year’s awards and why:

Best Local Brewpub: Central City – Sadly there aren’t that many tremendous local brewpubs in Vancouver.  Central City lacks the coziness I like in a pub, but makes the best beer by far.

Best BC Brewpub: Howe Sound – They make good beer and have a much cozier pub than Central City, plus Central City already won the previous award and should share.

Best BC Brewery: Driftwood – Because they make the best beer all around.  Their regular stuff is loved by all and their seasonals have beer nerds staking out liquor stores.

Best local beer establishment: Alibi Room – Because it’s the Alibi Room with a massive selection of tasty beer, good food, top notch coziness and because it’s the Alibi Room.  This is the most obvious award and should be renamed the Alibi Room Award and given to the Alibi Room for being the Alibi Room.

Best local beer server/bartender: Nigel Springthorpe – For bringing us the Alibi Room.

Best local private liquor store: Brewery Creek – Small and friendly, with a great selection and a helpful Facebook feed of new release information. Honors the CAMRA discount on all purchases, unlike other establishments that just discount beer.

Best local cask night: The Whip – In an effort to stave off obesity, I don’t go to cask nights very often.  I’ll give this one to The Whip over St. Augustine’s because they’ve been doing it for a long time. Also every night is cask night at the Alibi Room.

Best local beer event: Central City Cask Festivals - I heard the VCBW event at the Alibi Room was amazing, but I didn’t get a ticket and so try to pretend it didn’t exist.  Central City Cask Festivals, both summer and winter, are excellent though.  Lots of one off amazing beer and, hey, there’s another one in three weeks.

Best BC beer: Driftwood Fat Tug IPA – Because it tastes the best.  I want to bathe in it, but don’t because that would be a waste.

Best BC seasonal beer: Driftwood Sartori Harvest IPA – A fresh hop IPA that makes beer geeks behave like sharks at a feeding frenzy on release day.  This could go to any number of other Driftwood seasonals, like Cellar Dweller or Singularity.  Shout out to Central City Thors Hammer here too.

Best local beer blogger or writer: Barley Mowat – Because unlike most of us beer bloggers, he does actual work and research to write interesting things.  Favourite posts include the Cascadia story and his takedown of the upcoming Craft Beer Market. Always a good read.

So that’s who should win and I think I’ll be pretty close to nailing it, but we’ll see what happens. Where am I wrong?

Cheers,

Chris

Bestie: Bringing the Sausage Party to Chinatown

I met Dane Brown last August at the Gastown Cask Carouse where he told me about his new restaurant Bestie, which means beast in German and “best friend” in teenage girl. Bestie is billed as Chinatown’s finest currywurst and it surely will become so when it opens, since I know of no other currywurst venues in Chinatown (or in Vancouver).  They plan to sell local versions of German street food such as fresh baked pretzels, organic sausage, and Berlin street treat currywurst (I previously wrote about currwurst here), accompanied by local craft beer.  When I asked Dane what beer they had lined up he indicated they planned to serve Driftwood, hopefully something from the new Brassneck Brewery, and a German lager.

I was reminded of Bestie today when a colleague shared their innovate indiegogo campaign with me today.  They are pre-selling sausages for their early 2013 opening via Magic Sausage Cards.  Their campaign started today and, at the time of writing, has already sold $3325 of their $10000 allotment!  I imagine most of this money is going towards finishing construction and setting up shop.  Pretty great way to raise seed money, eh?

Bestie Magic Sausage Card Campaign from Bestie on Vimeo.

When I talked to Dane in the summer, he told me they planned to open Bestie in late October.  Since that hasn’t happened yet,  I reached out to Dane to see what’s the what (unsecrectly hoping they were having trouble getting a liquor license, so I could complain about the process).  He said getting the necessary building permits took way longer than expected and “more than anything we were just optimistically naive about the process and the timeline.”  Well, I appreciate the optimism and I hope it works out because I’ve pre-bought myself some sausage.

Cheers,

Chris

CAMRA Vancouver Award Winners

The CAMRA Vancouver Award winners were announced last week.  I was pleased to see many of my nominations amongst the winners.  I’m extremely proud of CAMRA Vancouver and its members for rewarding true attention to and passion for craft brewing.  Unlike many beer awards, these were given out by beer enthusiasts, which makes them more legitimate in my mind.  The winners:

Best Local Brewpub

Gold: Central City Brewing

Silver: Steamworks

Bronze: Dix Barbecue and Brewery

Best Local Beer Cafe, Pub, or Restaurant

Gold: Alibi Room

Silver: The Whip Restaurant & Gallery

Bronze: The Railway Club

Best Local Liquor Store

Gold: Brewery Creek Liquor Store

Silver: BCL 39th & Cambie

Bronze: Firefly Fine Wines & Ales

Best Local Cask Night

Gold: Dix Cask Thursdays

Silver: The Whip Real Ale Sundays

Bronze: Yaletown Making it Real (Ale)

Best Local Beer Event

Gold: Alibi Room 100th Beer Menu Rotation

Silver: Dix X-mas X-treme

Bronze: CAMRA on a Mission to Mission

Best BC Brewery

Gold: Phillips Brewing

Silver: Driftwood Brewery, Red Racer aka Central City Brewing (tie)

Best BC Beer

Gold: Red Racer IPA

Silver: Phillips Longboat Double Chocolate Porter

Bronze: Crannog Back Hand of God Stout

Best BC Seasonal Beer

Gold: Driftwood Sartori Harvest IPA, Phillips Crooked Tooth Pumpkin Ale (tie)

Bronze: Phillips The Hammer Imperial Stout

Cheers,

Chris

Alibi Room Celebrates 100th beer list

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