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<\/a>Of those 20 breweries, 10 are represented in the BC Ale Trail-er, literally a trailer where provincial breweries will each bring one beer to serve fest attendees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were contacted after the draw by the BC Craft Brewers Guild, who are involved in the [online craft-beer guide] BC Ale Trail. They asked us if we would partner with them to bring in 10 of the breweries that didn\u2019t make it into the [fest] and feature those breweries in one area we call the BC Ale Trail-er. What we\u2019ve done is we\u2019re bringing in 10 breweries over and above our usual lineup of breweries, and they\u2019re all going to bring one beer and they\u2019re going to pour it from a special refrigerated trailer over on the side of the festival, which brings our numbers up considerably: we\u2019ll actually have about 76 breweries in total this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
And of those breweries, it\u2019s a safe bet that a decent number of them are going to have hazy IPAs, the latest trend in craft-beer circles. Cloudy and thick, the popular drink takes the alcohol level of an IPA and removes the bitterness.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrends are changing rapidly in the beer industry right now,\u201d says Hieter. \u201cIt\u2019s almost a bit stupid, really. But last year, we had a lot of sours\u2014we still do have quite a few sours\u2014but what is the big phenomenon right now are what we call hazy IPAs or northeast IPAs. There\u2019s a lot of fruit character to them. They\u2019ve become so popular that within a year and a half, two years now, they\u2019ve basically eclipsed regular IPAs in popularity. We have a lot of those coming this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
But don\u2019t worry if your tastes run a bit darker\u2014if your palate needs malts, not hops. Hieter says that some world-class dark beer will be at the fest, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a dark mild from Riot [Brewing, from Chemainus] coming that won the World Beer Cup gold medal,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s considered to be the best mild in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
With 25 years behind it, the fest has seen craft beer\u2019s rise to popularity and acceptance\u2014although, surprisingly, things are just getting tougher for the fest, Hieter admits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the same market it used to be,\u201d he says. \u201cAt one time, we were the only beer festival in Canada, not to mention BC. Now there\u2019s probably 50 in BC alone. There\u2019s breweries on every corner now, in every town in BC. There\u2019s events happening everywhere. On any given weekend, somewhere in BC there\u2019s an event of some nature. For us the challenges are primarily Ribfest and Rifflandia. All of a sudden we\u2019ve gone from having no competition locally for that week or two weeks to now having nothing but competition. We\u2019re seeing it become more and more difficult every year, so we\u2019re just doing our best to have a good dozen new breweries and lots of well-picked, well-chosen beers and beer styles to keep people interested.\u201d<\/p>\n