beernesday

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!)

inside vancouver rates the best vancouver brewpubs  for the summer season

only two weeks late, its my review of the vcbw dead famous pub crawl! lord love a busy beer drinker! so, the theme of the pub crawl was dead famous as in dress up as a famous dead person (and the sponsor was the dead famous ad agency, who made us all lovely buttons of dead famous people) the first stop on the crawl was cinema, a donnelly group pub on granville street there we had our choice of a pint of driftwood's white bark or their farmhand ale woe be to me the non-wheat or belgian beer drinker in the crowd... i went with the white bark the food at this stop was cute little sliders with fries and chipotle aioli for me they put roasted veggies on a bun, and it was delicious!! (and hey, were the platters those ones from dragon's den that are all eco and stuff??) cute food is fun!! then we wandered our asses through the sunny streets of vancouver to the yaletown brew pub where we made everyone in costume pose (posers!) at the yaletown i started with the pil...

to whet your appetite for all things vancouver craft beer week here are a few photos from the dead famous pub crawl now, they aren't my photos they're from the vcbw facebook page cuz i haven't had time to get my pics off my camera yet  the most excellent dead famous buttons  some of the motley crew arriving at the yaletown pizza and beers at the yaletown brewpub and the whole costumed gang of famous dead folks 

my head, she aches! the folks at work suggest it may be related to all the beer i drank over the weekend i think they might be onto something! so far my vancouver craft beer week has been fabulous! definitely worth some head aching mornings! saturday's dead famous pub crawl, while not rocking my world as much as last year's four beers and a funeral did, was a very good time folks showed up in costume (famous dead people in case you didn't figure that out from the name of the crawl) and progressed through the crazy weather from cinema to yaletown brewpub to the backstage lounge to dockside, taking an aquabus between yaletown and granville island as far as i know, no one got stranded on the wrong side of the water! we were not accompanied by a band this year but did get serenaded at the backstage lounge by a balkan wedding band the dockside put on the hockey game for us and fed us a big bbq dinner and there were buttons! who doesn't love a button? i went dr...

tickets for signature events at vancouver craft beer week are on sale as of today! i went to the launch party at the dockside last night and got me some nibblies, some swag and some tickets! tickets for the rest of the events go on sale next friday, april 8th i will be attending hoppapalooza II at the alibi and this year's dead famous pub crawl (check out the hijinx at last year's pub crawl and then get thee a ticket to this year's - i think it was the best run, most fun, most interesting event in the city last year) i am playing the women and beer and the two brewery creek nights by ear most likely will be buying tix to them as well... a whole week of beer events - i'm in heaven! the launch party was quite well attended check out the size of the line to buy tickets: and this is the lovely beer toque that i got for swag: i love meese! the nibblies were good, if in shorter supply than the ravenous hoardes would have liked check out how cute the sl...

in honour of the upcoming canada up of beer, my notes from last year's event (such as they are - arranged alphabetically, not in the order in which i imbibed): barefoot wines:  didn't try any!  but good on them for taking the plunge to attend a beer festival beverage concepts:  i think this is the booth that offered several imports.  we had the menabrea from italy and anchor steam from san francisco.  liked them both. cariboo:  didn't hit this booth (i think we thought it was too generic, silly, silly us!). central city brewing company:  fabulous swag for sale!  we tried their lager and their pale ale.  jackie and julie both loved it.  i wasn't a fan.  which is so odd for me to say now that i can't get enough of their ipa or esb... guess i should have tried those instead of the lager and pale ale. dead frog brewery:  they didn't show up.  rumour has it internal strife kept them from appearing. dockside brewin...

okay, here's the scoop on the beers we enjoyed on the four beers and a funeral brewpub crawl, part of vancouver craft beer week, held on saturday.  as usual, i had lots of beers, so the notes start out legible and sensical and quickly degenerate.  here they are, sometimes verbatim, edited for sense and to protect any pride i might still have left! steamworks:  ginger beer - amazing, if i had more than two thumbs, they'd be up too.  an ale with lots of ginger flavour and carbonation.  makes the tongue tingle and the tummy warm.  great alternative to a lemon or lime lager for refreshment.  we all tried this beer, and were all mighty glad that we did. even though i swore i would only have one beer per stop in an effort to keep my wits about me, i broke that oath at the very first stop and had a second beer.  apparently it only takes 1 beer to make me forget all my good intentions.  bridget and i ordered ipas and amanda ordered the wheat beer...

tried so hard to upload camera phone photos during the crawl, but to no avail... then yesterday the excess excesses from the crawl hit me and i was unable to type... so my apologies that this post is so late in arriving... four beers and a funeral:  omg, i'm not sure there are words to describe the wonderousness of this event.  of course though, i'm going to use lots of them any way!  and post photos too! let me just begin however, by saying that the vancouver craft beer week crew did a fabulous job on this event in particular, and the whole week was so well run, well planned, and well imagined - i loved it!  and bought the shirt to prove it! first stop, steamworks.  amazing ginger beer, which is a limited edition, so hurry in and get yours before its gone. we were at this stop for an hour, so along with the delectable pub grub they served, we also had a second beer.  it was supposed to be ipa, but i think we got lager instead.  nothing to wri...