Victoria Beer Week, presented by the Victoria Beer Society, is returning for its 10th anniversary with Ten Years of Cheers! from March 1 to 9. Although Victoria Beer Week (VBW) has always been hosted at consolidated venues by the Victoria Beer Society (VBS), this year they’re shifting the focus—breweries are producing events at their own venues, says VBS beer director Joe Wiebe.
“Over the years it’s taken a lot of resources and person power to produce those events. They’re really expensive and it’s tougher and tougher to ask people to drop $50 or $60 for a big event,” says Wiebe. “Ultimately, I think this is a really positive move. The breweries are really excited to showcase what they have going on, and we’re really excited to promote that as a week of special activities. Some of the events are quite inexpensive, several are only $10 or $15, and I think that can only really work when the breweries produce the event in their own space.”
This new format will give breweries an opportunity to take more creative control over how to present to the public, and out of that arose a real sense of collaboration within many breweries on lower Vancouver Island.
“We gave them the opportunity to create their event with our moderation, with an eye to what we know with our experience and what we think would work, and there was a really neat sense of collaboration among the breweries,” says Wiebe. “They didn’t want to step on each other’s toes, they really wanted to work together, so I think it’s really cool how that atmosphere of collegiality came through.”
The craft brewing scene actually has a very healthy outlook on competition, because while they’re competing in the same space, they understand that customers can be shared and celebrated rather than being an exclusive, finite commodity. When small craft brewers band together, they can more easily stand up to pressure from the beer giants.
“They recognize that they are together a community, part of an industry that is basically craft beer fighting the big guys, the big breweries, like Labatt and Molson, because they still dominate the marketplace,” says Wiebe. “They still have the lion’s share of beer sales, so really I think that the competition is between all the small craft breweries as a group against the big guys.”
Wiebe says that innovation is still occurring within and also tangentially to the beer industry, such as emerging research into advanced strains of yeast, and new ways to process and work with malts and hops. One noteworthy innovation this year is a no-boil beer that Wiebe is enthusiastically anticipating.
“There’s a special beer that Whistle Buoy is doing in combination with Category 12 Brewing, and they’re actually doing a very experimental beer,” he says. “I don’t know exactly how it works but they’re doing a hazy IPA that is not boiled, and as far as I understand you really have to boil your beer as a part of the brewing process for the certain chemical reaction processes to happen, so it’s really interesting, I think, and I can’t wait to taste that one to see what the difference is.”
Even though the basic science behind beer has been the same for centuries, Wiebe says that it’s an industry that remains innovative and fruitful, and this ongoing creativity and enthusiasm is what brings new customers to the scene and keeps them coming back for more.
“The fact that the breweries are putting out so many interesting new beers every year and exploring and experimenting, they keep coming up with new ways to express themselves through their beers,” he says. “There’s still a lot of fresh new approaches to beer, and new ideas behind that. There are educational opportunities too, like online courses and tasting events, and even home brewing, so I think for the average consumer and people who are still relatively new to beer, there is so much to learn and discover.”
Victoria Beer Week
Various times, Friday, March 1 to Saturday, March 9
Various prices and venues
victoriabeersociety.com