This was my first year attending the Great Canadian Beer Festival, and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. I was very pleased to find when I arrived that all 65 breweries in attendance were Canadian.
The crowd of people that poured onto the field when the bell rang, announcing the opening of the gates, were just a few quick strides short of running in their mad dash to be the first in line for tokens and, of course, the amazing selection of craft brews.
And when I say amazing selection, I’m talking 249 different beers. There was no way that I was going to be able to try all of those beers. If my math is correct, that would be like consuming 83 beers in a span of six hours. Since I wasn’t keen on poisoning myself, I made a list of the beers in the handy beer festival guidebook that sounded absolutely lovely or just right up my alley.
Now, I have to mention that I really enjoy craft beers, so I had tried many of the brews that the localŃand some not so localŃbreweries had brought; as a result, many amazing brews didn’t get on my list.
I should also mention that I took many notes, and the first few notations are quite detailed. For example, I tried a sour beer from Dageraad Brewing called De Witte Sour Witbier and noted that it had a nice beer taste, as opposed to a more typical sour, cider-y taste; the effervescence felt delicate, and it was fruity without the sweet. I also noted to myself to buy it if I ever found it in the store.
That was by far one of the better sets of notes. Turns out, I’m quite the lightweight, and my careful note taking degraded rapidly into ‘good’s and ‘nope’s with multiple Os and exclamation marks (oh, well; I tried).
That being said, even under the influence of so many amazing (and, let’s face it, some not-so-amazing) brews, I did manage to note a few faves.
33 Acres from Vancouver, BC makes the great 33 Acres of Sunshine. This beer I for sure would get again; it was light and crisp and pretty much the perfect beer for a hot September day at beer-fest. This brewery also makes a 9.2 percent brew called 33 Acres of Euphoria that was amazingly deadly; boy, did that pack a punch.
311 Helles Lager from Coal Harbour Brewing was a pleasant surprise. This was a really nice, light, sweet-ish beer that I noted as nectar with a star beside it (it must have been good). I also tried their Woodland Witbier and, on its own, it wasn’t getting many stars in my book. But when paired with Taco Justice’s Brutus the Barbarian, two thumbs up all the way. I guess some beers just need companionship.
If you’re at all into beers, then you’re probably aware that sours have been a trend in craft breweries for the last couple of years. This year was no different, and many brewers brought a sour to the festival. A few were particularly enjoyable, like Vancouver’s Granville Island Brewing’s Gosebumps, which was lightly salted and only slightly sour.
One brew that caught my attention was the Kettle Sour Spruce Tip Ale from Victoria’s Loghouse Brewery. This brew was impressive because it actually tasted like spruce tips! I’m totally the type of person who eats the new tips of conifer trees while hiking, so it was a really pleasant surprise to find that they had gotten the flavour exactly right. (The brew even left that acidy feel on your teeth that spruce tips do.)
And I have to make note of the porta-potties: I hate them, I really do, but at this event there was some serious ingenuity on the part of the event planners. There were separate urinals for drunken men so that the ladies didn’t have to use peed-on toilets, and there were hand-washing stations set up in front of the toilets. Thank you, thank you, thank you to whoever suggested that at the event planning stage!
All in all, this was an impressive event that craft-brew lovers should attend next time around.