beernesday

cask alert: Please be advised that Dead Frog ( @DeadFrogBrewery ) will have the following upcoming cask: April 12, 4pm The Whip Restaurant & Gallery ( @WhipRestaurant ) Cask: Furious Friar Belgian IPA with pineapple, mango & jalapeño Ingredients: water, malted barley, hops, pineapple, mango, yeast, jalapeño Malts: 2-Row, Cara 8, White Wheat Hops: Columbus, Centennial ABV: 9% IBU: 55 Description: A deadly combination of West Coast hops and Belgian spice, experience intense tropical fruit and phenol aromas with flavours of citrus, coriander, clove and spice, finishing with a moderate chili heat. new releases:   THE ARK OF TASTE: A project of Slow Food, the ‘Ark of Taste’ is a collections of heritage foods from around the world designed to acknowledge local food heritage of which Red Fife wheat was Canada’s first addition in 2003.   Dunk...

due to a lack of space in the july/august edition of the bc craft beer news my lengthy article on the best craft beer patios in vancouver got truncated the whole article is available online but i'm also copying it here Summer time and the living is easy… not to mention best enjoyed on a patio! In a departure from my usual format and just in time for summer 2014, I bring you the very best patios in Vancouver for enjoying craft beer. The list starts with larger patios and beer menus and goes on down to smaller (but no less enjoyable) venues, with smaller beer menus. Only the heat and the hours available to you will limit your time on these patios, so there is no rating system in this round of reviews. Enjoy! Patio drinking tips: Look for session ales—those tasty lower alcohol beers that enable you to spend a long ‘session’ on a patio. Drink water! Go for a rinse cycle after every beer; your body will love you for it. Keep your drink out of the sunlight—no one likes a beer t...

bc craft beer month is in full swing! the belle of the ball so far is driftwood's sartori harvest ale, a fresh-hopped ipa sold out of stores the same day it arrived in them it is the star of several cask nights around vancouver and one beer-pairing dinner st. augustine's had a cask of the elusive sartori that sold out in 24 minutes that was monday tuesday there was a cask at the cascade room thursday there was a cask at the alibi room neither of those casks beat the 24 minute record, but neither lasted very long either missed out on the sartori both in the bottle and on cask? well, you've got three more opportunities that i am aware of to get yourself some: if you're a camra member and you have a ticket for the now sold out harvest fest / bc beer awards at chapel arts on saturday the 13th, you can have some of the members only cask that will be available there the whip has a cask of sartori on sunday the 14th tapping at 4, i expect this one will be gon...

tried two casks at two venues last night i love vancouver! first up, it was rail ale at the railway club featuring central city's red racer vanilla chai stout fortunately for me, there wasn't much vanilla in it at all instead it was a delicately spiced easy drinking stout i liked it, but not enough to have two... next up i went to the whip the cask wasn't tapped when i first got there so i had to suffer through a fat tug... my life is hard! the cask of r&b black water wheat got tapped around 10 p.m. after fat tugging it up to that point i just got me a taster of the cask you know, to be able to say i'd tried it! it was interesting... very banana on the nose, wheaty on the tongue, but not as robust as a hefe and what is black water? fortunately it is not waste water, its fulvic mineral water , phew! i don't have a chemistry degree, heck i didn't even take it in high school, so i have no idea what this lovely mineral water offers to a beer...

the whip posted this on facebook today i had forgotten where i had stolen it from thanks to the whip i can now properly attribute the theory to cheers! ‎'Well you see, Norm, it's like this . . . A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the heard is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same w ay, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.'

from the camra vancouver newsletter: Hello everyone, 2011 is coming to a close in a few days, but what a great year it's been for craft beer and real ale in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland! More and more liquor stores, pubs, and restaurants are beginning to carry a wide selection of craft beer, and it's even creating quite the buzz in the mainstream. It's not just beer bloggers typing away about the great beers in BC because we saw business magazines, to major newspapers, etc publish plenty of articles about the local craft beer scene. Vancouver Craft Beer Week was jam packed with events this year, and we even had BC Craft Beer Month! Last but not least there's been some great collaborations between brewers and breweries as well. As far as real ale goes, this year we saw more establishments on board with the weekly/monthly cask program. But what's really exciting is that we now have 6 different restaurants that serve real ale on a daily basis! This year The Wh...

from camra vancouver's lasted newsletter: There used to be a time when craft beer enthusiasts in Vancouver would celebrate every time Nigel switched up the tap list. But the list began to change so frequently, we decided to give our livers a break and only celebrate the big numbers. Well, it's that time again. In a few more weeks it's going to be the Alibi Room's 300th beer list! On December 12, 13, and 14, the Alibi Room will be serving some special beers in a 10oz glass for $3. It's first come first serve, and the fun starts each day at 3pm. The wait is almost over. Russell Brewing and Storm Brewing's Collaboration Brew, The Big Smoke will be debuting Sunday December 4th at The Whip. The cask will tap at 4pm, and bottles of this smoky, wee heavy style ale will be available at select independent liquor stores. If you're excited about all the changes Trevor Kallies has made to many of the Donnelly Group locations, you have something to look forward to...

in case you haven't yet had your fill of the fresh-hopped sartori get your ass down to the whip for the penultimate vancouver cask tapping at 4 today! the new oxford one tapped out in an hour... just sayin' oh, and its dockside's 10th anniversary party tonight (at dockside of course!)

the driftwood sartori cask at the new oxford last night was awesome! there were a whole gaggle of beer geeks there not so patiently waiting for 5:30 and the tapping thanks ian!! alas, the service at new oxford left a lot to be desired amanda thankfully took it upon herself to fetch us all our glasses of cask as ian endeavoured to get it poured as quickly and foam-free as possible on the upside, ian says that there will be another cask of the sartori at the whip he's not sure when they'll be tapping it and... another cask coming to vancouver no word yet on who will get it or when they will tap it, but keep yer ears peeled if you're a sartori lover (and if you're not, what's wrong with you???)

Tonight is Rail Ale Tuesday at The Railway Club. They will be tapping a cask of Bumbleberry East Side Bitter, from R & B Brewung. Here's what the folks at R&B have to say about it: A mix of blueberries, blackberries and raspberries stuffed into a a cask full of ESB that has been dry hopped in the conditioning tank and again with the berries in the cask. Tapped @ 5pm and facebook suggests i have a beer at 5:00 for jack layton sounds like a plan is born   i had the r&b pale ale cask at the whip on sunday afternoon dry-hopped with czech hops it tasted kinda like iced tea which on a hot and muggy afternoon was a very good thing! just had the one pint though

i did my part yesterday afternoon to help kill the cask of st. hurricane at the whip! took us all of about two hours to do but that cask of hoppy goodness went down! quite heady, and totally yellow it wasn't quite the hop monster i thought it was going to be but i can assure you anyone who doesn't love hops wouldn't have been able to handle it! it was one of those perfect afternoons not too hot, not too cold the whip was packed but not so crowded your beer got jostled the beers were going down easy the laughs were coming even more easily perfection!

disloyalty cards for beer? could it work in vancouver? boy, would i love to see that! hit st. augustine's on monday, the railway on tuesday, cascade room wednesday, yaletown on thursday, london pub on friday, the alibi room on saturday and the whip on sunday and you've filled up half a card already! that's an incentive plan i can follow! or is it a disincentive plan...

this week's yelp is all about the beer in vancouver! Yelp's Pint Runneth Over This Weekly Yelp brought to you by Velopalooza "Howe" does a beer sampling "Sound"? Vancouverites aren't exactly shy about their suds. But alas, a good micro can be hard to find at your average Cold Beer and Wine Store. So your Weekly Yelp is here to hop you up on the freshest spots to find a frosted barley pop worth drinking. You betta beer-lieve it! “With over 40 craft beers on tap,” St. Augustine’s is a “must for anyone who likes craft beer,” promises Brad T. He considers himself quite the cicerone and recs "pairing their Flintstones-sized ribs with a pale ale and the oysters with a wheat beer." Kat S gives The Whip and its collection of all the "great microbrews our province has to offer” a crack. The "specialty cask openings on Sunday afternoons" also sound like the perfect cure for what ales us! Andy Y prefers to fill up his beer belly w...

yikes -  very behind on my timely posts... the cask last week at the railway was leann's candy dish and it was delish! tasted like a patio and that wasn't just me saying so, i heard it echoed around! i dunno what i was thinking, but somehow "candy dish' equaled peppermint or uber sweet in my mind but it wasn't not at all it was fruity, and tart-sweet it tasted like summer like what you'd want to be drinking on a hot and sweaty patio reminiscent of a fuzzy peach candy, but less sweet the next cask is lundy's collaboration grapefruit ipa thanks r&b for actually letting lundy help make it! the whip was initially offering the vcbw cascadian dark ale cask on sunday afternoon so i had me a pint while the grapefruit ipa chilled to the right temperature the vcbw cascadian dark ale while maltier than i like a cda, it was most drinkable the grapefruit ipa in the fridge then i made the grave mistake of needing food and not just any ...

i was going to be a good little blogger and post about the rest of the events... but there is a cask of lundy's grapefruit ipa at the whip in about half an hour that i need to get my ass over to and drink! see you there???

yay for avoiding green beer last night! and double yay for the wonderful cask at the whip! r& b's smokey jameson stout did not disappoint smokey jameson stout the bottom of the cask was a bit toooooo yeasty for us

what a great beer week this one's gonna be! tonight is the "beers with benefits" tasting at firefly, hosted by the amazing lundy tomorrow is beernesday, natch thursday is st. patrick's day and the beernesday gang has decided to hit the whip in an effort to make merry without worrying about inferior beer choices or gasp! green beer details of all the fun to follow when i've managed to catch up on my sleep!

went on a mini pub crawl with my own personal viking yesterday everyone should have their own personal viking they are very, very useful they drink with you, they carry the heavy things in case of attack, they can protect you... and they're always game to go on a pub crawl with you! since we needed to run beer errands at brewery creek and firefly, we thought the main and cambie area would be a good place to go for a sunny afternoon's worth of beers beginning at the whip on main where we had the soup of the day (prawn, lemongrass thai) i went with storm's hurricane ipa the viking went with storm's black plague stout (nevermind the apocolypse, its the black plague stout) both of which were divinely delicious i love that the stout is complexly malty without resorting to vanilla or coffee notes the ipa is hazy and not overly hopped, with lots of fruity notes then to brewery creek so i could pick up my bottle of upright brewing's clash ale that worke...

here we are, several days into the inaugural Vancouver Craft Beer Week and i have yet to attend an official event. why, you might ask, why? tight pursestrings would be the easy answer.  there are so many fabulous sounding events, but each one comes with a price tag that until i win the lottery, i just can't justify paying. i would have been willing to part with cashola (or more realistically, creditcardola) for more events, but for my great fear of showing up at a beer and food pairing event that tries to feed me only meat.  you see, i'm a lacto-ovo-pescatarian (and no, i don't need medication for that) which as far as vegetarianism goes leaves me on the more flexible side of food restrictions (eggs, dairy, fish and seafood are all on my "eat it" list), which is good.... but not good enough to take the risk that some of the food on offer will fall into the above categories. so what? you may be asking, so what?  well, the menus for the craft beer and food...