Your globetrotting liquor reporter is penning this week’s column from the sunny shores of Vancouver Island, where I am enjoying a weekend junket to the 20th annual Great Canadian Beer Festival.
This is Canada’s longest running craft beer festival, and is held in Victoria on the first weekend after Labour Day every year. With 8000 tickets up for sale, this year’s festival sold out in less than an hour, which should tell you that there are a lot of beer nerds out there.
Spread over two days, the Friday session is a bit more restrained, as many of the locals have to work into the evening. Saturday afternoon, however, saw a three-block lineup to get into the park gates at opening time. The lineup was full of colourful costumed characters, dressed in everything from stilts to giant banana costumes, and everything in between.
My arm candy pointed out that the weekend after Labour Day still counted as Frosh Week, so it was not entirely surprising that the local U.Vic students would be out in full force.
The prim and proper beer snobs like your humble narrator took a more measured approach to the beer festival, taking the time to fully appreciate the nuances of each fine brew, while taking care to palate cleanse between each tasting for a full enjoyment of every sample.
With 57 different brewers represented, it was surprising to only see the only Albertan vendors were the fine folks from Banff Brewing & Jasper Brewing.
Yes, gentle reader, there was nary a Big Rock, Wild Rose, or Alley Kat to be found. Luckily, the BC breweries more than made up for the Albertan absences, with 32 different BC craft breweries pouring their wares.
The granola munchers on the West Coast seem to have more of a taste for craft beer than the stuffy corporate drones here in Alberta, as there are close to triple the number of craft breweries to be found in our neighbor to the west.
There were many delectable brews that I enjoyed at the Great Canadian Beer Festival, but in the interests of you, the faithful reader, I will only talk about brands available here in Alberta.
Cannery Brewing from Penticton has been a longtime favourite of your intrepid liquor reporter. Located in the heart of BC wine country, it makes for a refreshing change on those weekend winery tours.
The Anarchist Amber Ale is their most popular session beer, and is a full-bodied malt forward brew that is much loved by beer fans.
Those coming over from the megabrew side of the fence, and only timidly sipping from the steel teats of your local craft brewer will appreciate the 360° Lager.
With its light straw colour and billowing white head, this is an unintimidating beer for the teeming millions that the beer snobs refer to as the mass market. If you are currently drinking a megabrewery beer, this will ease you into a more flavourful craft beer without frightening your poor and neglected taste buds. Hints of cereal malts and honey with very little bitterness on the finish make this an easy drinking beer.
My arm candy prefers the Apricot Wheat Ale, a crisp and refreshing summer beer with hints of delicate fruit sweetness from locally grown apricots.
The Cannery Pale Ale is a nice manly beer for a hot day, perfect for mowing the lawn or watching the game. With more of a hop bite than the others, this is a perfectly balanced summer brew.
In the winter months, however, your intrepid liquor reporter’s tastes turn to the darker beers, and the Blackberry Porter does not disappoint. This beer starts as a thick and creamy porter-style beer, then pure blackberry essence picked from the local fields is added during the brewing process. The result is a dark and malty beer with lots of smoke flavour dancing back and forth with the rich blackberry on the palate. This is an after-dinner sipping beer best enjoyed in front of a roaring fireplace at a mountain lodge.
For the indecisive, you can find the Cannery Collection at your local booze merchant, a 6-pack of assorted bees, with the contents changing a few times per year.
Your humble narrator likes to keep an assortment in the fridge at all times, but the favourite brands always disappear too quickly!
