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 […]
Saisons come full circle
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 […]
So what’s the difference between stouts and porters?
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 […]
How Fresh Can You Get: The elusive charm of fresh hop beers
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 […]
#LagerLove
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 […]
Five years, 100 new breweries
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 […]
Everything you always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask, about Sour Beers
Lambic, gueuze, kriek, oud bruin, Flanders red, kettle sours, spontaneous fermentation, coolship, brett, lacto, pedio, foeder, or is it foudre? In the realm of sour beers a lot of names and terms get flung around. If you’re someone […]
The Electric Craft Beer Acid Test
Hey dude, did you know there’s acid in your beer?! Indeed, some of B.C.’s brewers have been purposely adding acid to their beers for a while now – lactic acid, that is. The sour beer craze is only getting bigger […]
Contract brewing looks to help “homeless” breweries
Contract brewing is part of the beer business that most people know little about. The idea is simple: rather than build your own brewing facility, you pay an existing brewery that has excess capacity to brew your beer for you. […]
The forecast is hazy this summer
Cloudy beers have started to fill glasses in tap houses and brewery tasting rooms, but we’re not talking about German hefeweizens or Belgian witbiers. Instead, these opaque beers are a newish style called “hazy IPA” and they’ve taken the West […]