beer column
my notes from yesterday's beer column on cbc radio one's on the coast with stephen quinn:
If you can’t
make it to Munich for the famous Oktoberfest, being held right now, never fear
– there are several smaller versions taking place right here at home!
Harvest Haus begins on Thursday. Ooom-pah, sausages
and pretzels, and of course, lots of beer await you at the Queen Elizabeth
plaza. Running Thursday, Friday and
Saturday this weekend, and Friday, Saturday and Sunday of next, you can enjoy
sword-play and dancing, and cheersing with ceramic steins.
Darby’s Gastown is
celebrating Oktoberfest on October 2nd from 1:00 – 5:00 p.m. They’re pairing four beer styles, dunkel,
marzen, alt and hefeweizen with German fare of pretzels and sausages. No tickets required, just show up and enjoy.
Port Moody’s Oktoberfest runs from September 29th to October 2nd and
the 6th to the 9th at 100 Newport Way. There will be beer, pretzels, sausages and
kettle corn, live dj, singing and dancing. $20 gets you entry to the tent for
one evening, $50 gets you a pass for all the days of the festival.
And the 5th
Annual Harrison Beer Festival will be held on October 28 and 29th in
Harrison Hot Springs. There’s an
Irish-themed cask fest on the Friday night, followed by a tasting festival
during the day on Saturday, culminating in an Oktoberfest dinner and dance on
Saturday night.
Looking for
something a little different to do? Why
not try a craft beer corn maze! There’s
one in Abbotsford running 11:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m. every weekend until October
23rd. The Roadside Harvest Social will
provide fun for the whole family – dogs included! There will be three different corn mazes, one
for the kids, one for all-ages and one for those wanting to drink their way
through it; plus a pumpkin patch, play area, dog bar, photo booths, lounge area
and craft beer garden. Entry is $5 for
those 3-18 and $10 for those 19+
Roadside’s
partner breweries for the craft beer tasting corn maze and beer garden are the
Fraser Valley’s Field House Brewing, Ravens Brewing, Old Abbey Ales and Old
Yale Brewing. The beer tasting corn maze includes four tasting stations in a
three kilometre corn maze with a total of four 3-ounce craft beer samples, and
is included in your entry fee.
And looking ahead into November, put these dates in your calendar:
Celebrate Craft... Beer! is a fundraising crafts market and craft beer tasting. It will be held on November 5th at
Performance Works on Granville Island.
And I have the honour of being one of the jurors selecting the winning
beer. Come see which one we choose! Tickets are available on Eventbrite and
include a tax receipt for a portion of the $37 price.
Tri-cities cask fest will be held at The Burrard Public House in Port Moody on November 19th
from noon til 5:00 p.m. Tickets are $35
which will get you tasters of 10 cask beers and a beer cocktail. The event is expected to sell out, so get
your tickets on Eventbrite now!
Going back to Oktoberfest for a minute, what kind of beer is traditionally drunk at Oktoberfest?
The traditional beer style is Marzen, also
often called festbier or oktoberfestbier. This style of lager hails from Bavaria. In 1553 there was a brewing ordinance that
decreed that beer was only allowed to be brewed from September 29 to April 23rd. Marzen was brewed in March following a recipe
that included high alcohol and hops content to help preserve the beer in cold
storage throughout the warmer weather until new beer was again allowed to be
brewed. Marzen are full-bodied, malty
beers with a dry finish.
Oktoberfest
came about as a way to finish off the previous year’s beers and make room in
the casks for the new beers to be brewed.
If you have to drink a lot of beer in a short amount of time, it only
makes sense to have a festival for it!
It wasn’t a full-on festival until 1810 though, when King Ludwig invited the
city out for his wedding, and it didn’t become totally beer focused until many
years later, with Marzen becoming the official beer in 1872. Technically speaking, Oktoberfestbier refers
only to beers brewed in the city limits of Munich, such as Paulaner and
Lowenbrau. All the rest are
Oktoberfest-style beers. In 1990 the style of beer served at Oktoberfest
changed to a lighter-bodied, golden-coloured brew, most commonly known as
Festbier.
Beer Tasting:
We are
full-swing into pumpkin beer and everything pumpkin spiced season. For tasting today I brought in a very amusing
anti-pumpkin beer: Category 12 Zombie
Repellant Ale.
This is a
Belgian red ale with hints of orange and fennel. Category 12 brewed this beer as an alternative
to the overwhelming pumpkin-ing of this season.
It is 6.9%. Available in 650 ml bottles at select liquor
stores and on tap at 12 Kings Pub on October 7th at 7:00 p.m. as
part of the Category 12 tap takeover.
You can try the ZRA, plus 7 other Category 12 beers at that tap
takeover.
Red ales tend
to focus on the malts, but they can be quite hoppy as well. Generally they’re balanced beers with toasted
malt characteristics and a light fruitiness.
Because this is a “Belgian” red ale, we can expect fruity esters from
the Belgian yeast – part of the “orange” flavour. The rest of the fruitiness comes from the
Azacca hops, known for their intense citrus and tropical fruit notes.
Beer Picks:
To round out my beer picks, let’s go with a local Oktoberfest-style
beer: Bomber Brewing Marzen – medium-bodied
with a dry finish. It’s malty, with some
hop bitterness. This seasonal is
available in six packs of cans and 650ml bomber bottles at the brewery and
liquor stores.
And a twist on the pumpkin beer theme:
Phillips’ Toothless Pumpkin Sour Ale.
At a mere 4.7% this sour version of the pumpkin spice beer has a sour
bite and a dry finish. Available for a
limited time in 650ml bomber bottles at private and government liquor stores.
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