B.C.'S CRAFT BEER AND CIDER GUIDE
GOLD – Best Imperial Ale/Lager // Hermannator One of the founding breweries of the early microbrewery movement in Canada, Vancouver Island Brewing began its existence as Island Pacific Brewing in 1984. Its original location was in Saanichton north of Victoria […]
GOLD – Best Farmhouse/Wild Brett Ale // Juxtapose GOLD – Best Wood-Aged Beer // Norwood GOLD – Best Sour Ale // Nectarous SILVER – Best Light/Amber Lager // Hüftgold SILVER – Best Belgian-Style Ale // Triplicity BRONZE – Brewery of […]
Beer, at its basic level, is a waste product produced by uncountable millions of yeast cells as they chew their way through a sugary slurry (called “wort”) that brewers prepare for their feasting. Those fermentable sugars can be derived from […]
A few years ago I visited Belgium as part of a beer-focused active tour: we spent the mornings hiking or biking and then visited breweries in the afternoon and restaurants in the evenings. One of my favourite experiences was the […]
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of The Growler, out now! You can find B.C.’s favourite craft beer guide at your local brewery, select private liquor stores, and on newsstands across the province. Ask any […]
When the British beer writer Michael Jackson first began writing about Belgian beer culture in the 1970s, he found very few examples of saisons in existence. By the early 1990s he even described the style as “endangered.” But he loved […]
Ask a range of people what the difference is between porters and stouts and you might get as many answers as the number of people you ask. Conducting a blind tasting might be just as unproductive as the styles tend […]
With the arrival of fall comes a surge of fresh hop beers from B.C.’s breweries. These special beers are available for a short window of time because they are brewed with freshly picked “wet hops” immediately after harvest. Normally, hops […]
Ask a beer lover what their favourite is, and odds are they’ll pick something on the extreme edge of the flavour spectrum: a hoppy/hazy IPA, tart sour, or barrel-aged imperial stout. Rarely will a lager make it on to a […]
Back in 2013, when the first edition of my book, Craft Beer Revolution: The Insider’s Guide to B.C. Breweries, came out, there were 50 craft breweries in the province. But at my book launch early in June, I joked that […]