storm brewing
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 | 2 Comments
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
Dix Summer Caskival
Monday, August 10th, 2009 | Beer | 8 Comments
Erik and I attended the Dix Summer Caskival with the wives last Saturday and it was really fun. It was by far the best beer event I have attended in Vancouver, thanks to the plethora of good beer on hand. My only complaint was that, like most beer events in these parts, it started too early. I understand that its tough to take over a restaurant on a money making Saturday night, but starting a beer event at noon means that drinking beer is all you are really going to do that day. It was really good times nonetheless.
We arrived at Dix a bit before noon and queued up with the other eager beavers. We’d heard that arriving early was a good idea to ensure no delicious cask beer went untasted. We were not disappointed and had unobstructed access to the many creative brews available, which were:
- BigRidge Brewery Creek Dry-Hopped Lager
- Central City Red Racer Double Dry-Hopped Empire IPA
- Dead Frog Raspberry Bulleit Bourbon Nut Brown
- Dead Frog Sahti Pale Ale
- Dix Double IPA
- Dix Raspberry Blanche
- Dix Oak Aged Barley Wine
- Dix Dunkel
- Dockside Pilsner
- Driftwood Wit/Saison Blend
- Howe Sound Blackberry Nut Brown
- Longwood ESB
- R&B Raspberry Sun God Wheat
- Russell Blueberry Wheat
- Russell IP’eh!
- Spinnakers Cranberry-Orange Ale
- Storm Rollicking Red Nose Raspberry Apple Cider
- Storm ‘Root of All Evil’ Root Beer
- Swans Oaked Scotch Ale
- Taylor’s Crossing Oak Aged Mad Scow Stout
- Taylor’s Crossing Dry-hopped Red Truck Lager
- Yaletown Cider
- Yaletown Oud Bruin
- Whistler Brewhouse Woodward’s IPA
For the cost of $20 ($15 for us CAMRA members), we received admission to the Caskival, a nifty tasting glass and three tasting tickets. We purchased quite a few more tasting tickets for $1 each and we didn’t want to waste any, which meant that we tried almost all of the casks on hand, save a few of the lagers. My two favorite beers were both from Dead Frog, who represented the valley well with their two entries. I find that tart/sweet fruit flavors go well with nut brown ales, which is why I liked the Howe Sound Blackberry Nut Brown as much as Dead Frog’s Raspberry Bourbon Nut Brown. However, my particular favorite was the Dead Frog Sahti Pale Ale. Sahti, a traditional Finnish beer made with unmalted grains including barley, wheat, rye and oats and flavored with juniper instead of hops, was a beer I’d never had before. The Dead Frog version tasted strongly of pine, but in a good way. Other particular favorites of mine were the Driftwood Wit/Saison blend and the R&B Rasberry Sun God Wheat, both because they were a little out of the ordinary. There were ten other beers there that I really liked, but listing them all would simply mirror most of the above list.
In the end, I do believe that the Dead Frog Sahti Pale Ale won the Golden Spile award for brewer’s choice (a spile is a small wooden peg used to control the flow of carbon dioxide out of a cask). Erik and I both voted for this one, which must mean we have exceptional taste. The Golden Bung award for drinker’s choice went to Storm‘s ‘Root of All Evil’ Root Beer (a bung is like a cork for a cask). I too enjoyed the Storm Root Beer, mostly for the novelty of drinking a beer resembling the common soft drink. A worthy choice, but not my favorite.
We ended up leaving the Caskival a little early, but more than satisfied, to hunt down some pizza. We were definitely feeling the effects of our tasting and were not particularly productive the rest of the day. Still, I can’t wait for the Dix Winter Caskival, where I’ve heard the beer is twice as adventurous. I did take a few crappy pictures of the event with my iPhone (forgot the camera, shoot), here they are:
The wait to get in, a tad early in the day...
Casks on the bar, before the crowd arrived
More casks on the pool table, so much good beer.
Cheers,
Chris
Vij’s Restaurant and Vij’s Rangoli
Monday, June 22nd, 2009 | Beer | No Comments
As a present for her birthday, I bought my wife tickets to see Les Miserables, on Father’s Day, oops. We managed to see our Father’s on different days and still take in Jean Valjean in all his glory. We wanted to go out for a bite to eat after the show, and when looking for places nearby the Stanley Theatre, famed Vij’s seemed the logical choice. Our plans hit a snag when we found out that Vij’s doesn’t open until 5:30. Our show was a matinee and ended at 4:45, so instead of waiting out front, we popped into the more casual Vij’s Rangoli next door. Now I’d heard that people line up to get into Vij’s, but I had no idea how popular this place really seems to be. Do people line up? Do they ever! By 5PM they were nearly fifty people lined up down the street, and not all of them made it in. Some stayed to wait another hour or two for the first service to end, others joined us in Vij’s Rangoli. I was impressed by the fanfare, but also feeling foolish at not seizing my chance to get in. The food must be freaking good!
People Waiting in line at Vij's
I wasn’t feeling too badly though, because Vij’s Rangoli was also quite good. It is more of a deli style place, complete with market, than a restaurant. The food was delicious, I had a lamb curry dish and Rachel had shredded pork, but I was particularly impressed with the beer menu. Instead of the usual lineup of Canadian and American macro lagers, Vij’s Rangoli had Propeller ESB, Anchor Porter, Pilsner Urquell, and Rickards White. These four beers are not similar and offer a variety of tastes, better suited to pairing with different dishes. In this town, where beer is often overlooked, I was pleased to see they put some thought into the menu! Checking online, I also note that Vij’s main restaurant has Storm Pilsner, IPA, and Scotch Ale on the menu, pretty solid. What could be better than a well prepared curry dish paired with a well prepared IPA? Not much, which is why I’ll be waiting in line next time.
Cheers,
Chris
Cask Ale Sundays at The Whip
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | Beer | 2 Comments
Two incidents made Sunday a strange day for me. The first happened that afternoon during my soccer game. I was subbing into the game when a spectator’s dog bit me on the thigh. I’m not sure what I did to provoke it, but the dog lunged at me as I was running past it onto the field. I’m still sporting fang punctures and a nasty bruise. How often does that happen? Had you asked me right then, I would have assumed that would be the strangest thing to happen to me all day. I was wrong.
It was Erik’s birthday this week and the Wolfe family tradition entails going out for a meal together. Tempted by the CAMRA newsletter, we chose The Whip to enjoy the cask ale they feature every Sunday. Sadly, CAMRA members had already consumed the cask of R&B Red Devil Pale Ale by the time we arrived. No bother, The Whip has an excellent beer menu and we were able to drink some tasty local craft beer. I enjoyed pints of Storm‘s Hurricane IPA and Black Plague Stout, both of which were highly enjoyable. Some undercooked yam fries aside, the food was also excellent. I really enjoyed my Mexican chicken burger.
It was as we were eating that Sunday’s second strange incident occured. We were enjoying our meals when a group of extremely intoxicated people arrived, taking a table near us. They were no trouble, but I can’t say I enjoyed their company. The serving staff quickly took note of their level of innebriation and cut them off. I heard one remark “this is the third bar we’ve been kicked out of” only for the waitress to reply “this is isn’t a bar, it’s a restaurant!” The group was allowed to finish their beers, giving one fellow the chance to expose himself in the middle of the dining room, perform the “windmill”, and place his genitals in his friend’s glass. How often does that happen?
I can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like it, I mean the incident, not the… I don’t blame The Whip in the least. Upon hearing of the infraction, the offending group was quickly removed. The Whip’s staff even gave us coupons for a free pint and 15% off during our next visit. We’ll definitely go back because the food, beer, and atmosphere were great. Happy birthday Erik, you’ll definitely remember this one.
Pictures of our visit:
Erik and Holly enjoying their beers
The wife and I
Papa Wolfe
Kelly and Concord, they don't drink beer:(
Cheers,
Chris
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