beernesday

my notes from yesterday's on the coast beer column on cbc radio one, with stephen quinn wherein we drank driftwood's pilsner doehnel and chatted about beer gear The craft beer boom is having quite the trickle down effect.  Sure there are new breweries opening up every day, but brewers aren't the only ones benefitting from the attention on craft beer these days.  Everyone associated with the industry is booming.  And with a boom come innovations!   Beer Gear: The rising number of breweries with tasting lounges and growler filling stations mean that more growlers are being produced. Everyone has their own branded ones, including breweries and groups like CAMRA. There are more than just glass growlers available however. 33 Acres carries ceramic growlers when they can keep them in stock and Hyrdoflask makes double walled, vacuum sealed, insulated stainless steel growlers, which will keep liquids cold for up to 24 hours or hot for up to 12. That's right, it'...

i went on a little pub crawl in north van last week we only hit four venues but i feel we did well for a friday evening step one: take seabus to foreign lands step two: avoid getting hit by train on the way from seabus to black kettle step three: sample beers at black kettle on tap: wheat ale, pale ale and ipa i really enjoyed the wheat and the pale the ipa was too well-balanced for me - i need more pacific northwest hoppiness! step four: walk back along tracks take photos of interesting and unintelligible messages step five: stop for food at sailor hagar's split hairs with server about their continued use of the name "brewpub" when no brewing is done on-site any more (howe sound brews their beers now) step five.five: enjoy a persephone pale ale instead of the house beers (count this as the best beer i had all night) eat waffle fries with ketchup and hot sauce and call it dinner step six: walk back to lonsdale quay and visit g...

if you missed me on cbc radio one's on the coast with stephen quinn last week and you'd still like to catch me getting all excited about the new craft breweries in the lower mainland that opened in 2013 and those touted to be opening in 2014 then all you gotta do is clicky and choose the january 7th show i'm on about 10 minutes from the end, in case you wanna fast forward

my notes from tuesday's beer column on cbc radio one's on the coast with stephen quinn (you can hear me wax poetic about craft beer every second tuesday at 5:50 p.m. - 88.1 in the lower mainland)   Is there such a thing as too many local breweries? Is the Lower Mainland beer market hitting the saturation point - - or is more beer always better? It's probably safe to say that 2013 was a banner year for craft beer in the in the Lower Mainland - - certainly a banner year for local breweries. So what awaits Vancouver beer lovers in 2014? 5 breweries opened in the Lower Mainland in 2013, with GreenLeaf at Lonsdale Quay getting in just under the wire in late December.  (33 Acres and Brassneck in Vancouver; Deep Cove in North Van; Four Winds in Delta; plus major expansions at Steamworks and Central City). I have heard of 6 new breweries slated to open in Vancouver in 2014, plus one in Abbotsford. Bomber Brewing on the Adanac bike path in East Van looks set ...