A Great Canadian Long Weekend on the Victoria Ale Trail

Most of the 3.6 million annual overnight visitors to Victoria – city of my birth and capital of the province of British Columbia – are drawn to its charming island setting, British colonial character, mild climate, and outdoor activities. Each time I visit Suzhou’s sister city, however, I rarely find time to stroll the lush grounds of Butchart Gardens, explore the hidden alleys of Canada’s oldest Chinatown, or join a waterborne whale watching adventure. It’s the craft beer I come for.

One of my favourite times to enjoy Victoria’s fermented delights is in the second week of September when the Royal Athletic Park plays host to the Great Canadian Beer Festival (GCBF). More than 60 breweries participate, attracting approximately 8,000 people. With so many brewers and craft beer enthusiasts gathered in a city of only 86,000 residents, you can feel the excitement.

This year was special. It was July 11, 1992, when the forerunner to Canada’s longest-running beer festival was held at George Pearkes Arena with eight participating breweries. Twenty-five years later, the GCBF has grown substantially from its humble origins and survived many challenges. Its founding organizers continue to serve as directors of the festival society. Needless to say, there was no way that I would miss the opportunity to celebrate this remarkable achievement.

Craft in Support of Craft

Getting caught up in the euphoria of BC’s craft beer revolution, it’s easy to quickly associate the mention of “craft” with beer. However, there is a non-beer craft community of artists, artisans, teachers, scholars, collectors, and gallery owners that is represented by the Craft Council of British Columbia.

Last year, in celebration of Craft Year 2015, the two came together for the Craft Year, Craft Beer fundraiser at VanDusen Botanical Gardens. This year, the collaboration returns on November 5 for Celebrate Craft…Beer!, a charitable fundraiser that will be held at Performance Works on Granville Island.

Celebrate Craft…Beer! features a curated market of local artists and seasonal craft beer from 18 BC breweries, who will be competing to win an amazing handmade tap designed and created by a noted local artist. The winner will be chosen by a judging panel consisting of Chad McCarthy, Rebecca Whyman, and Ken Beattie. Attendees will also be able to vote for the Peoples’ Choice seasonal. Last year, Strange Fellows Brewing won both categories.

The Other Vancouver Hosts Inaugural Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference March 4-5

Early bird registration pricing for the inaugural Pacific Northwest Homebrewers Conference March 4 – 5 in Vancouver, WA, ends February 16. Homebrewers from British Columbia, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and beyond are invited to expand their brewing skills through two days of educational seminars, networking opportunities and evening tasting events.

The Coming BC Craft Beer Correction

With the number of craft breweries in BC expected to reach at least 130 by the end of 2016, competition is growing to the point where I expect we’ll see an increasing number of business failures. That’s not because there’s a lack of room for growth. BC has a population and GDP similar to Oregon, yet they have double the number of breweries we have. It’s because there’s a shrinking margin of error, especially in outrageously expensive Vancouver.

Growth of the BC craft beer market alone hasn’t floated all boats. (Remember Plan B, DIX, Taylor’s Crossing, and Surlie?) Yet, that’s what many of the startups seem to be counting on without a much deeper consideration of to whom and how they will sell their beer. In fact, there are breweries that don’t even have a working marketing plan (not the same as a promotion plan), never mind a marketing budget (not the same as ad hoc spending). We’ll see how much longer they’ll last on passion after the next 30 breweries open their doors.

Thanks to Beer Me BC, we have a better idea of whom the typical BC craft beer drinker is and their consumption habits. According to the most recent self-selecting survey, they are predominantly males between the ages of 27 and 42 living in the Lower Mainland and Greater Victoria. They drink, in ranking order of preference, India pale ale, stout, pale ale, sour ale, or saison from a bomber 3-5 days per week, mostly at home. Their beer is chosen foremost for its style, then by brewery and reputation.

Unibroue Rare Beer Methuselah Contest

I remember when I was beer shopping in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, and came across a Jeroboam (3L) of Chimay Bleu. The enormous bottle made an immediate impression. I imagined cellaring it for years, then opening it on a special occasion to share the Trappist elixir with good friends. Needless to say, bringing it back to Vancouver in my luggage was not an option and I didn’t have time to find out what shipping it would cost. The opportunity slipped from my grasp.

Now, beginning on November 19, there’s an opportunity in the Lower Mainland for you to acquire an even larger rarity. Chambly, Quebec, brewery, Unibroue, will be selling exclusive 6-litre bottles of La Fin du Monde and 17 Grande Réserve through the 39th & Cambie Signature BC Liquor Store. At $149 each for La Fin du Monde and $199 for the 17 Grande Réserve, these will be the largest and most expensive bottles of beer ever sold in Canada†. Only 50 bottles are available.

Is the Middle Kingdom the Next Craft Beer El Dorado?

With the craft beer market share in BC at 20% and the number of craft breweries in the province approaching 100, the landscape is starting to look a lot like Downtown Vancouver’s skyline. That’s not to say the market can’t sustain more breweries, given the other 80% that hasn’t come under the craft beer umbrella, but there will need to be more growth. The question is, where will it come from?

No Sure Bet

The easy days – if there really ever was such a thing – are over. Considering names like Surgenor, DIX, Taylor’s Crossing, and R&B, opening a craft brewery in BC is no longer a sure thing. Having a passion is not enough to carry a business. Now, a lot more dispassionate business acumen has to go with it. Marketing needs to be a fundamental component of one’s business plan, not an afterthought. That means realistically analyzing the market to find your niche and developing a strong brand around it before spending a cent on real estate and plant. Or for those with an existing business, it’s time to take a hard look at where the industry is going and ask yourself if major changes will be needed in how you operate to stay in the game.

As I anticipated, increased competition has breweries – especially those without a clearly defined niche – increasingly searching for new markets. Logically, the first forays outside BC have been to Alberta and Washington. Then, it’s only natural that the rest of North America eventually came into view. Anywhere else?

The Business of Craft Beer

According to Jan Zeschky’s reckoning, there will be 22 new craft breweries opening in British Columbia this year — that is, 22 he is aware of. This will bring the total number of BC craft breweries and brewpubs to 85.

So if we assume, on average, that each brewery will produce six beers annually (four core, two seasonals), that amounts to 510 BC craft beers. That is equal in number to 84% of all beers currently sold in the 197 BC government liquor stores, only you won’t find even close to that number of local craft beers actually sold there.

This makes for an increasingly competitive landscape, putting more pressure on startups to have a solid business plan.

BC Liquor Law Review: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

Almost anyone who enjoys having an alcoholic beverage in British Columbia will have a gripe or few about the legal restrictions on doing so. Well, now you have a chance to influence some changes the government will make to bring our laws more in line with the current social culture. Like Halley’s Comet, this opportunity does not come often. Don’t let this chance to have your views included pass. Saying your individual opinions don’t matter is lame. It’s not about you! It is the sum of the parts that matter, so make yourself part of the equation by October 31 for the collective impact to be greater.

So what should those changes be? It’s easy to leap right into the details, but I have to agree with Anthony Gismondi:

Modernizing B.C. liquor laws has to start with a philosophical change about how we interact with alcohol.

In many respects, I think we are already there, given the many parties that are pushing for change. The challenge is for the government to accept the broader cultural underpinning for these changes and approach this issue from that perspective, rather than reacting piecemeal to parochial lobbying, which is what led to the LDB warehouse privitization fiasco and special dispensations to the wine industry (BYOB, legal personal importation) that irritated beer and spirits folks.

Molson Scoops Prized Sartori Hops

Cresting the hill, a vista unfolds much changed since I last visited five years ago. Once an open field and a vision in the mind of Christian Sartori, the land is now covered by trellises draped with verdant boas sporting clusters of aromatic hops, hops that gave rise to Driftwood’s legendary Sartori Harvest IPA.

When I first paid a visit to Chris Sartori’s secluded Columbia Valley ranch, I was joined by two brewers and a brewery owner. The hop crisis had hit and I was hoping that by introducing Chris to our craft brewers, they would establish a long-term relationship that would both reduce the financial risk of his venture and help create for them a more reliable hop supply.

Forage for Craft Beer Contest

While I have lamented for some time that most hotels in Vancouver seem oddly uninterested in promoting local craft beer to the city’s visitors, this is slowly beginning to change. One of my current favourite Vancouver hotels to enjoy a BC brew at is The Listel Hotel on Robson Street (at Jervis). Forage, their zero waste restaurant (formerly, O’Doul’s), offers a seasonally-changing selection of ten BC craft taps, along with some Pacific Northwest bottles. I can’t resist having their meaty popcorn with crackling for a beer snack as a start to an evening of seriously good local communal noshing. Chef Whittaker’s award-winning BC spot prawn and seafood chowder is also not to be missed!

Starting today, in a BCbrews exclusive contest, you have three chances to win a $100 gift certificate to forage. Every Monday for the next three weeks, I’ll be posting a question on Twitter with the hashtag #forage4beer relating to forage’s beer selection, which you can find on their Web site. Answer the question once on Twitter, being sure to include the hashtag. Then, on every Friday at 5pm, we’ll choose a random winner who has correctly answered the question.

On a final note, be sure to keep an eye on the forage twitter feed for news of an exciting craft beer event that is in the works. You won’t want to miss it!