Love Good Beer

Rad Beer Festivals Coming Soon

Monday, March 15th, 2010 | Beer | No Comments

Spinnakers is hosting their Spring Cask Beer Festival this weekend, Saturday March 20th.  Alas, I am too late in writing about it, for it is already sold out. It would have cost $30 for entry, souvenir glass, and three beer tickets, plus $1 for every extra beer ticket after that.  It will be good times for those lucky enough to have tickets.  The lineup is said to include beers from Driftwood, Phillips, Lighthouse, Vancouver Island, Central City, Elysian, Deschutes and more.

If you missed out on Spinnakers, don’t get too down because the Washington Cask Beer Festival is the following Saturday, March 27th in Seattle.  For $35, this one includes twenty tastes to drink from your very own commemorative cup.  I went last year and had a really good times.  With so many free tastes and such a stellar beer lineup, my group had a hard time keeping it together.  We had a really good time until things got out of hand.  Id’ say the Washington Cask Beer Festival is the best beer event in the Northwest, so don’t miss this one.

For those of you not willing to make the trip south of the border, you’ll soon have an opportunity to party in your hometown.  Vancouver Craft Beer Week is happening May 10-16, but I still haven’t heard what it will entail.  That being said, I’m sure it will be super rad and something to look out for.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: beer festival, Cask Beer, cask festival, spinnakers, vancouver craft beer week, washington beer commission, washington cask beer festival

Washington Winter Beer Festival 2009

Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | Events | No Comments

The Washington Beer Commission is holding the 2009 edition of their Winter Beer festival this December 4th and 5th.  I recently received an email containing the beer lineup and it looks to be a good one.  I attended the Washington Cask Beer Festival last Spring and really enjoyed it, so I imagine the winter edition is similarly epic.  Serious BC beer fans should consider heading down the I5 to take part in what promises to be a good festival.  I really considered buying tickets, but am planning on attending the Dix Winter Caskival on December 5th instead.  Both events will be good, but Dix is just so much closer to home!

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: DIX Brewery, washington beer commission, washington cask beer festival, winter beer festival, winter caskival

Washington Cask Beer Festival

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | Beer, Events | 2 Comments

As a follow up to Erik’s last post, I thought I’d chip in with my impressions and some pictures of the Washington Cask Beer Festival.  It was definitely a very good time and a very impressive festival.  Vancouver has nothing to rival this event, which hosted almost forty craft brewers and sixty cask conditioned beers.  I was surprised at how crowded it was; even knowing that this was the second of two sessions to sell out.

As for the beer itself, it was good.  I can’t say much more than that, mostly because I don’t remember.  I recall liking some more than others and, like Erik, I recall a particular fondness for Port Townsend and their Hop Diggidy IPA.  We did manage to soldier through and taste each of the sixty beers on offer, although we were sharing tastes by the end.  Those who opted out of the sharing duly suffered, up was chucked….

We definitely drank too much.  Next time (oh yes, we’ll be back), we won’t hit up a German restaurant with a solid beer selection beforehand.  It definitely didn’t help that the majority of the beer was 50% to 100% stronger than normal.  Highlights of the evening include my wife stealing a wet floor sign, silly walking across the festival floor, and talking to Chris Martin of Coldplay (not even a good facsimile).  It was also cool to see pregnant Darci having a great time taking down our tasting notes.  She proved that you can have fun without drinking, which scientists had previously thought impossible.  It was also really fun to read the tasting notes the next day, one from Peter read “tastes like dry erase marker, but I like it.”

As for the pictures, you can clearly see how our night progressed:

We begin, a nice normal picture

An hour later, not quite as subdued

Only a corner of the festival floor, it was big and well attended

And the fun begins

Cool tasting glasses. Erik and I smashed ours for not being made of glass. How dare they?

Erik's face, why not?

The wives, not as happy the next morning, still married to us.

After a while, nobody wanted to share with me anymore.

Still going strong...

Wooooooooooo!

Action sip.

Why not a group hug?

Hands in...

From there we went and took ridiculous pictures with the Space Needle, which I will spare you from viewing.  Then the night sort of feel apart, but we ended up having a good time the next day.  More to follow.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: Coldplay, erik is a good man, hop diggidy, peter chandler, port townsend, silly walks, space needle, washington cask beer festival

The New Imperial Empire

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | Beer, Events | 4 Comments

As Chris mentioned in his previous post, we attended the Washington Cask Beer Festival.  As can be assumed, it was great; never have I seen so many casks of great beer in one single room.  For a first timer to this festival, I and possible the rest of the people in my party, may have gone a little overboard.  Half way through the evening we decided that the only way to possibly make it through a good number of the casks was to share each tasting three ways.  Those who adopted this sharing strategy made it through the night largely unscathed – those who choose not to share claimed to have had a ten minute conversation with Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin at the end of the event.  Perhaps adding a few chefs to the bill would have made for a slightly less alcohol intensive evening while adding a great opportunity for food and beer pairings – pretzels are only good for so long.

The three winners of the six to ten o’clock tasting round, Laughing Buddha’s Pandan Brown Ale, Harmon’s Vanilla Porter and Ram’s Coconut Porter, were all great and worthy of recognition, although the Vanilla Porter was a bit cloying for my tastes.  My personal favourite brewer of the evening was Port Townsend Brewing, hands down winner.  Both the Porter and IPA from Port Townsend were flavorful and brewed to style while remaining distinct from a myriad of other Porters and IPAs.  Ram’s coconut porter was my favourite adjunct beer of the night – the coconut flavour was very noticeable but not overpowering.  The beer selection was great, but I think beer diversity could be improved upon.

I would like to point out what I consider to be a growing epidemic in the world of craft beer – Imperialism; the super-sization of ale.  I may receive criticism from many beer lovers for saying this, but it must be said.  Brewing a stronger, imperial version of an existing beer is just not creative.  Not every beer becomes better by adding more hops and more grain – bigger is not always better.   The Washington Cask Beer Festival was filled with Imperial strength versions of a brewer’s standard offering.  If craft brewers continue walking down the imperialist path, I fear we may lose our much loved session beers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love strong ales – but when inundated with such potent brew over and over again, a person’s taste buds simply give up and that once enjoyable over the top Imperial IPA begins to taste like a tree.  There is no shame in showing up to a cask festival with a regular strength English Bitter – I personally would have loved to see a selection ranging from light session beer to heavily hopped Russian Imperial Stout.

It is time for all beer lover to unite, stand strong and say enough is enough – we demand regular strength cask ale.  This regular strength ale can of course be poured alongside a cask of imperial strength beer – this will add diversity to an often pallet numbing cask experience.

Erik

Tags: Chris Martin, Coconut Porter, Coldplay, Harmon Vanilla Porter, imperial ipa, IPA, Luaghing Buddha Brewing, Pandan Brown Ale, Port Towsend Brewing, Porter, Ram Brewery, washington cask beer festival

Feierabend is good German times

Monday, March 30th, 2009 | Beer | No Comments

Erik and I, as well as Peter and our wives, went down to Seattle this past weekend for the Washington Cask Beer Festival (another post to follow).  For obvious reasons, we thought it a good idea to get something to eat before the festival.  After scouring the internet for the most appropriate place we stumbled onto Feierabend, a German restaurant with an excellent German beer selection.  Google Translate informs me that Feierabend means “closing time” or “end of work”, but we were just getting started.

We were put off by the sketchy website and the disconnected phone line, but decided to try our luck anyway.  My anxiety was not assuaged after it appeared we were heading for the middle of nowhere, but were pleased to find an open Feierabend tucked away in a Yaletown like alley.  We were not the least bit disappointed with our restaurant selection after we walked in.  It was a well put together pub and they did indeed have many lovely taps of rare (at least for us Canadians) German beer.  I was delighted with both the Spaten Helles Bock and Hacker-Pschorr Alt Munich beers I chose.  Everyone else was happy with their beer also (except for Darci, who dutifully abstained).  The food was merely good, attempting German authenticity.  I had a bratwust sandwich with sauerkraut and spaetzle, which wasn’t overly impressive, but we couldn’t complain at such reasonable prices.  I would definitely go back.

It was also at Feierabend that my wife let me know how embarrassing the photos I put on this blog are.  Apparently my iPhone doesn’t cut it, not that I really minded.  It is true, neither Erik nor I are much into photography, assuming we remember to take pictures in the first place. The solution?  Get the wife to take the pictures, her handiwork is below.

In retrospect, consuming copious amounts of German beer before the festival may have been a mistake and surely contributed to the fiasco that followed.  Stay tuned.

Erik and Chris looking foolish at Feierabend

The wives

Beer and pretzels

Beer eye view

Me and my Spaten Helles Bock

Peter with a Dunkelweizen

Not the best spaetzle I've had

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: alt munich, dunkelweizen, feierabend, hacker-pschorr, Helles Bock, pilsener, seattle, spaetzle, spaten, washington cask beer festival

Upcoming Beer Travels

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 | Beer | 4 Comments

I’ve got back to back weekends coming up that involve beer travel and I am pretty excited about them.

This Saturday, Erik, guest contributor Peter, and I are heading down to Seattle for the Washington Cask Beer Festival.  Their mouth watering lineup includes sixty one-of-a-kind beers brewed by thirty seven of Washington State’s illustrious brewers.  My obsessive compulsive nature has me wanting to try each one.  I am pretty sure this won’t be possible (or healthy), but we are staying the night, so I won’t be holding back.  We are also going to eat at a few brewpubs and are planning a stop at Bottleworks, where I hope to find some rare gems.  Because I don’t get down to Seattle much, I am really looking forward to this.  Erik and I will definitely be writing about our upcoming adventure.

The following weekend, I and twelve of my friends are heading to Victoria for guest contributor Dave‘s stag.  Having already done my homework, I booked us at Swans Hotel and we’ll definitely be visiting Canoe Club and Spinnakers also.  A good portion of us are beer enthusiasts, but we’ll all be sampling the fresh and tasty wares of Victoria’s finest brewpubs before we paint the town red.  We have rounds of golf at Cordova Bay and Olympic View booked and secured a hot dog suit for the weekend.  This is as close to heaven on earth as it gets for me.  Friends, beer, golf, and a hot dog suit, what more could a man want?

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: bottleworks, canoe club, cordova bay, hotdog suit, olympic view, spinnakers, swans, washington cask beer festival