Tag Archives: beer tasting

Drink Smarter (Education Through Consumption)

by Mike

Do you want to learn more about beer?  Do you want to do a guided personal or corporate tasting?

Vancouver now has a way to do this in Drink Smarter.

Paul Pyne is a certified Cicerone and a craft beer consultant.  Not only is he a Cicerone but he is also an Industry Professional and an Instructor in craft beer courses.

If you are wanting to get into craft beer he can do a guided tasting of some good entry level beers.  He can also do very specialized tastings be it to a certain style, Country or Theme.  These tastings are not limited to private events either you can also have these tasting for your company.  Recently I was invited out to a specialized tasting with a few of my industry counterparts.  Seeing as we are not just your average consumer Paul set us up with some seriously cool beers.

I have lost my notes of the beers we tasted but the following are what we tried.

Gulden Draak – 2016 Limited Edition Aged in Whisky Barrels 03/2016.
Brekeriet – Sourley Wine (Sour Barley Wine)
Hornbeer – Caribbean Rumstout
Straffe Hendrik – Heritage 2015 Quadrupel a Armagnac Oak Aged Ale
Le Trou du Diable – L’Ours

This was one of the best tastings I have every been to.  The beers were amazing and Paul had done a tone of research about the breweries and the beers themselves.  I would highly recommend checking out one of this tastings or hiring him for a private tasting and education session. 

http://www.drinksmarter.ca

paul@drinksmarter.ca

https://www.facebook.com/DrinkSmarter.ca/

Beerlesque 3 – September 20th 2013

by Mike

On Friday September 20th, 2013 the third annual Beerlesque was held.  Like last year the event was held at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown an area of Downtown Vancouver.  The event was put on by Vancouver Craft Beer Week and The Donnely Group.  The tickets once again cost $55 but included everything but the food.  One wrinkle this year was that with your ticket purchase you had to choose a time slot for the Burlesque proformance.  There was a 7pm and 9pm show but the event ran from 6pm-11pm.  All the action was shown on big screens in the main hall so that you could see everything going on in the theatre.

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The breweries at the event included Lighthouse, Bridge Brewing, Red Truck, Russell, Driftwood, Phillips, Deep Cove, Steamworks, Vancouver Island, Storm, Hoyne, Central City, Parallel 49, Steam Whistle and New Belgium (Colorado USA).  All were pouring amazing beer but my pick as best beer was Storm Brewing’s Cherry Lambic.

Partial Beer List
Driftwood Brewery – Fat Tug IPABridge Brewing Company – North Shore Pale Ale, Hopilano IPA
Storm Brewing – Cherry Lambic, Black Plague Stout w/ Whiskey, Hurricane IPA
Vancouver Island Brewing – Storm Watcher, High Tail Honey Ale, Hermans Dark Lager, Seadog Amber

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Like always there were great Entertainers at this amazing event including The Danger Thrill Show with Neil E. Dee, Rebel Valentine, Lola Frost, Burgundy Brixx, callio p cock,  Lydia DeCarllo, Nicky Ninedoors, and a drag show featuring local Brew Masters.  The brewmaster drag show was a ton of fun and all 4 guys showed a ton of balls including James (Jamey Storm) of Storm Brewing, Adam Chatburn the President of Camra Vancouver, Scott Butchart (Tamara Tuggit) of Van Brewers and Shae DeJaray of Deep Cove Brewers and Distillers.

7:00 PM*
Danger Thrill Show
Teresa Marie (ukulele performance)
callio p cock (burlesque)
Lola Frost (burlesque)
Burgundy Brixx (burlesque)

9:00 PM*
Drag Show
Lydia DeCarllo (burlesque)
Rebel Valentine (burlesque)
Nicky NineDoors (burlesque)

Like last year this was an amazing event with lots of amazing people, breweries and performers!  I look forward to next years festivities.

Full sized photos can be found here
Mikescraftbeer Flickr

The 2012 Great Canadian Beer Festival – Impressions

by steveeh

I am heading back to the mainland after attending the Great Canadian Beer Festival in Victoria with my fiancé, aunt and uncle. I will unpack particular beers, brewers, breweries and tasting later, I just wanted to write down my impressions and an overview of the festival while it was still clear in my mind.

To start: I had a blast. I attended the Friday event and it was a lot of fun. There were 56 beer tasting booths plus one cider booth and 5 food booths. Obviously I only managed to taste a fraction of the beer on offer (174 plus 4 ciders) so we focused on breweries that are difficult or impossible to find locally, local breweries with interesting sounding casks or one-offs, and a couple of brand new locals with each of us getting something different at each booth and sharing it around. The whole event just has a fun atmosphere, where else can you drink roughly 4 pints in the sun surrounded by fellow beer geeks? Spending hours talking beer with my family, brewers and random strangers while tasting things I have never tasted before really could be my idea of heaven.

The beer itself had its good, it’s bad and it’s ugly, with heavy emphasis on the good. The number of beers I liked vastly out numbered the beers I didn’t and I can limit the one I hated to just 3 (all the same brewery so I only spent one token trying them all, no great loss). I came away with some new favorites that will be going into the fridge and some brews to look for when I travel.

This years festival was definitely themed on Canada, show casing many breweries from the BC, the Prairies, Ontario and Quebec plus one from the North-West Territories, two from Oregon and one from Washington. It really shows how craft beer has grown here in Canada with so many breweries popping up.