Tag Archives: foamers’ folly brewing co

Fest-Of-Ale 2017 – Penticton

by Mike

April has come again and one of my favourite beer festivals has come and passed.  This was the 22 annual Fest-Of-Ale in Penticton.  This years festival was held on April 7-8th 2017 (Friday and Saturday).  This festival is held at the Penticton Trade and Concention Centre and is comprised of a large indoor area and a small outdoor section.  Both areas have live music as well as food options.

This festival continues to grow every year.  This year had an extra 15 breweries bringing it up to 65 and and a total of 6 bringing it up to 71 cider and beer producers.

This year the list included:

4 Mile Brewing Co.
Bad Tattoo Brewing Co
Banff Ave Brewing Co.
Barley Mill Brew Pub
BC Brew Co. and Distilling  – New
BC Tree Fruits Cider
Beau’s All Natural Brewing
BNA Brewing Co
Bomber Brewing
Boundary Brewing Company  – New
Bridge Brewing
Britannia Brewing  – New
Cannery Brewing Co.
Canuck Empire Brewing
Category 12 Brewing
Coal Harbour Brewing
Coronado Brewing Company
Crannog Ales
CrossRoads Brewing  – New
Dead Frog
Detonate Brewing
Doan’s Craft Brewing Company  – New
Dominion Cider Co
Dogwood Brewing – New
Double Mountain
Fernie Brewing Co.
Field House Brewing Co.  New
Firehall Brewery
Foamers’ Folly Brewing Co.  New
Four Winds Brewing
Fuggles & Warlock Craftworks  – New
Glutenberg
Hearthstone Brewery
Highway 97 Brewing Company Ltd
Howe Sound Brewing
Howling Moon Craft Cider
Hoyne Brewing Co.
Kettle River Brewing Company  – New
Lighthouse Brewing Company
Longwood Brewery
Marten Brewing Co.
McClelland Premium Imports
Moody Ales
Moon Under Water
Mt Begbie Brewing Co.
Naramata Cider Co.  New
NOMAD Cider – New
Orchard Hill Estate Cidery Ltd.
Parallel 49 Brewing
Persephone Brewing Co.
Phillips Brewing & Malting Co
R&B Brewing Co
Ravens Brewing Company
Red Arrow Brewing Company  – New
Red Collar Brewing Co
Red Racer
Red Truck Beer Company
Spinnakers Brewpub
Steamworks Brewing
Steel & Oak Brewing Co.
Strange Fellows Brewing  – New
Summerland Heritage Cider Co.
The Parkside Brewery  – New
The Tin Whistle Brewery
Torchlight Brewing
Tree Brewing Co.
Twin Sails Brewing  – New
Twisted Hills Craft Cider
Victoria Caledonian Brewery  – New
Whistler Brewing
Yellow Dog Brewing

This year there were more than 175 craft beers being poured over the Friday and Saturday with over 5000 people in attendance.  Once again this was an amazing festival with great beer and lots of great people!  Here are some of the beer and food that I tried while at the fest.

This year I spent more time working on episodes of Pacific Beer Chat than I did taking photos for the blog.

Episode 12 Found us talking with Crannóg Ales out of Sorrento.   Website, Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher.

Episode 13 Part 1 found us talking with a selection of breweries as seen below.  Website, Google Play Music, iTunes, Stitcher.

Cannery Brewing, Detonate Brewing, Bomber Brewing, Steel & Oak Brewing, Untapped Craft Imports, BNA Brewing, Kettle River Brewing and Torchlight Brewing.

Episode 14 Part 2 found us talking with a selection of breweries as seen below.  Monday May 1, 2017

R&B Brewing, Crossroads Brewing, Tin Whistle Brewing, Marten Brewpub and Yellow Dog Brewing.

Like every year this was an amazing event.  There are a ton of people but you never have to wait in line long for a beer.  So many beer festivals get so crowded that you almost need two samples glasses to make it to the front of the line.  In the years that I have attended this has never been an issue.

This festival has become one of my absolute favorites every year.  Most of the best breweries come to this festival every year and the people really love that fact!  This year there were so many new beers to boot!  It may not have been requested but this year so many breweries brought out North East Style IPA’s the super cloudy and juicy beers.  These beers are all the rage right now and I am very happy that this is the case.

The first day of the festival I really explored the beers that the festival had to offer as I usually do.  This year though the weather was very bad on the way to Penticton and you could pick out the people like me that took the Coquihalla Highway and the Okanagan Connector as were were still stressed out and drank a bit to much because of it.  On Day 2 I was once again one of the as they put it Industry Expert judges for the best beers of the festival.  After Juding beer from 10am on Saturday I decided like normal that the second day of the festival was far more about the food than the beer.  Luckily for me the food was amazing!

If I remember correctly on Saturday around 3pm all of the judges made their way to the Main Stage for the awards ceremony.  Here are the winners from this years festival.

The Awards were distributed as follows:
Best in Show, Judges’ Choice Award:
High Five Hazy IPA – Yellow Dog Brewing, Port Moody, BC

Best in Class, Judges’ Choice Awards:
Pilsner/Golden Lager Pixel Pils – Fuggles & Warlock, Richmond, BC
Pale Ale Dusk Pale Ale – Parkside Brewery, Port Moody, BC
Wheat Ale Summer Ale, Witbier – Steamworks Brewing, Burnaby, BC
Saison Sirens Chai Saison – Britannia Brewing, Richmond, BC
Amber/Dark Ale Brave Liver Scotch Ale – Mt. Begbie Brewing, Revelstoke, BC
IPA Street Legal IPA – Twin Sails Brewing, Port Moody, BC
Specialty IPA High Five Hazy IPA – Yellow Dog Brewing, Port Moody, BC
Dark Lager Dark Lager – Steel & Oak Brewing, New Westminster, BC
Stout/Porter Dry Irish Stout – Ravens Brewing, Abbotsford, BC
Sour Nectarous – Four Winds Brewing, Delta, BC
Cider Pippin’s Fate – Twisted Hills Craft Cider, Cawston, BC
Fruit Beer Park Life Passionfruit Ale – Bomber Brewing, Vancouver, BC

The People’s Choice Awards, voted for by guests at the event:
Best Beer Old Style Lager – Red Arrow Brewing, Duncan, BC
Best Cider Pears & Peaches – BC Tree Fruits Cider, Kelowna, BC
Best Food Brodo Kitchen, Penticton, BC

When it comes right down to it if you can only make it to one beer festival in British Columbia in a year then the Okagnagan Fest-Of-Ale is that one festival.  They also have an amazing pop up liquor store to boot!

Foamers’ Folly Brewing (Under Construction 2) – Pitt Meadows

by Mike

I just wanted to do a really quick update on the construction update on Foamers’ Folly Brewing as it has been just over a month since I stopped by.

FoamersFollyBrw2-286

The first notable change with the brewery when you stop by is that they now have the sign up telling everyone who they are!  It is always exciting driving by a local building and seeing a new brewery name on the walls!  At least it is for me when I find them in Vancouver.  The brewery was already basically fully setup so I did not take any photos in the back but the tasting lounge is looking great at this point so I thought I would take a few photos there.  The bar looks finished at this point and also really good!

The brewery looks to be open in Late November at this point but it is still coming very soon!  Pitt Meadows you better start getting excited!

Foamers’ Folly Construction Update One

Foamers’ Folly Brewing Co
http://www.foamersfolly.ca/
https://twitter.com/foamersfolly
http://www.facebook.com/foamersfolly
19221 122A Avenue
Pitt Meadows
cheers@foamersfolly.ca

Foamers’ Folly Brewing (Under Construction) – Pitt Meadows

by Mike

On Friday (September 25, 2015) I went from not knowing a brewery was opening soon in Pitt Meadows to standing in their under construction brewery in less than 3 hours.  Sometimes social media and dumb luck come together wonderfully!  Foamers’ Folly Brewing may have been flying under the radar but no longer.

FoamersFollyBrew-01

The lounge is still heavily under construction at this point but while I was there the tap lines were being installed.  They have 20 Taps likely with 20 beer and one for CO2 with 8 Growler fillers on the other side of the bar.  Having the one CO2 tap will mean they could also fill beer that are not on the filling station.  The brewery will also have a patio to be installed and ready for summer time next year (no point building it for the winter).  One nice touch with this brewery is the fact that the entire space including the brewery and mezzanine upstairs have been approved to be licensed as a lounge.  There will only be tables in the lounge proper but you will be able to move around freely.  If you look up while getting a grower fill you will also see a stack of 6 horizontal bright tanks suspended above you!

This brewery will be very unique when it opens up.  They do not have one brew house but two with two different sets of fermenters to go along with them.  Walking up onto the brew house platform you are met with one 500L system with a larger 2000L system beside it!  The 500L system is designed to do double batches to fill 1000L fermenters while the 2000L system is similarly designed to fill 4000L tanks in two brews.  They have done this to reduce downtime while brewing as they can have two different beer on the go at any one time.  Another neat system they have for doing interesting one offs like single hop beers is a small mobile system with a duel step 4-100L tank system (4 Kettles and 4 Fermentors for a total of 8 tanks) so they can fill them on the brewery floor then move them back upstairs to ferment while still being attached to the breweries glycol chilling system.  This way they can make a base beer in the 500L brew house and make 4 distinct beer out of one base beer.  This will make test batches very easily scaleable as they use the same carefully temperature controlled system.  To help maximize space the brewery decided to go with horizontally stacked bright tanks.  You can see in the one photo that the cooler is still under construction.

On the mezzanine is where the grain mill, grain (well it will be) and glycol system are housed as well as the batch of bright tanks that you can see from the growler bar.  They also have a nitrogen system so they can pour nitro beers!  Hidden up here was also a bottling machine!  When I was there they had just received their first batch of growlers and were loading them up on the second floor for temporary storage.

The brewery has three brewers but none will be considered a head brewer or assistant brewer.  The plan is to always have two of the three brewing on brew days minimum.  They hope this will help bring creativity to the brewery as they can all brain storm as equals.

They will not have beer ready for consumption until they open up in November but I was lucky enough to be able to take home the first one out of their first batch!  The 1L bottles look sharp.

November is coming very soon so Pitt Meadows better start getting excited!

Full sized photos can be found here.

Foamers’ Folly Brewing Co
http://www.foamersfolly.ca/
https://twitter.com/foamersfolly
http://www.facebook.com/foamersfolly
19221 122A Avenue
Pitt Meadows
cheers@foamersfolly.ca