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.

Vancouver Island Craft Beer News: Sept 27th, 2012

In my haste to get my last report in I forgot to announce a few other cask events and a couple of other new beers from Vancouver Island Brewery.

Cask Nights Abound for BC Craft Beer Month

In addition to the previously posted about Cask nights at the Strathcona Hotel in October, there’s even more to report. A brief look at the CAMRA Victoria events calendar shows there is not one, not two, but three different venues offering cask nights to celebrate BC Craft Beer Month. A total of 15 different cask evenings are planned throughout October. CAMRA divided the week and gave each venue a day. Monday’s belong to the Beagle, Tuesdays @ The Games Room & Thursdays @ The Clubhouse at the Strathcona , and Fridays will be at Canoe Brewpub. First up on the docket is a Cask of Driftwood Brewing Companies Sartori Harvest Monday October the first at 530pm. Head over to the CAMRA Victoria website events page for details on all the other cask nights. Be sure to show up promptly, as these casks won’t last long.

For those unfamiliar with these locations the Beagle Pub is located at 301 Cook St, The Strathcona Hotel is at 919 Douglas St and Canoe Brewpub is at 450 Swift St all in Victoria,BC.

LDB Privatization: A Guide to Some Great Reporting

by WanderingPaddy

Since February, when Liberal Finance Minister, Kevin Falcon, dropped the bomb that the provincial government was going to sell off the province’s two liquor distribution centres, and with them, the province’s warehouse distribution system, it seemed everyone associated with the local liquor industry has been voicing concerns about how this is going to impact the BC liquor landscape.

The Alliance of Beverage Licensees of BC (ABLE), who represent more than 1,000 pubs, bars and private liquors stores, has come out against the privatization. The BC Government Employees Union has come out against the privatization. The NDP has come out against the privatization, with NDP alcohol critic Shane Simpson stating in the BC Legislature, “The process is tainted.” CAMRA BC, on behalf of craft beer consumers, is about to officially come out against the privatization. Heck, even the mostly inert Craft Brewers Guild of BC have gotten in on the action and gone public with their displeasure at how this will negatively impact the province’s alcohol industry.

The Next Wave in BC Craft Beer

It was just over three years ago when I started this blog out of frustration over the lack of craft beer coverage in the mainstream media – virtually none. In fact, they were reporting the decline of beer in favour of wine when I knew it was a generalization that completely overlooked the ferment that was happening in BC amongst the microbreweries and brewpubs. Clearly, the MSM had no idea, given their wine obsession. At the time, craft beer in Vancouver seemed like an underground subculture whose workings were known to a select few. I had started getting the word out through CAMRA Vancouver’s newsletter, but needed a means for discussing issues and covering events in more depth than e-mail. The B.C. Beer Blog was born.

The Ties That Bind – How the BC Liberals Want to Limit Beer Choice

It came to my attention yesterday that with respect to tied houses and related trade practices in British Columbia, the Liberal government intends to reduce current provincial regulations. For them, it isn’t a question of whether or not to do so; it is a matter of how much.

For those who do not know what a tied house is, this is the definition from the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch (LCLB) consultation paper that was recently circulated to some potential stakeholders:

A tied house is an establishment that has an association, financial or otherwise, with a liquor manufacturer or its agent that is likely to lead to its products being favoured.

What this means is that a pub that is owned or has some contractual arrangement with a brewery, may find itself obligated to sell beer from that brewery alone. As a result of the Liquor Inquiry Commission of 1952, this was made illegal due to the lack of competition that resulted from brewery consolidation. Those were the beer Dark Ages in Canada when “beer” was synonymous with mass-produced lager because that is all you could get. It took 32 years before craft brewing even resurfaced here!

CAMRA Vancouver Summer Beer Festival

St. Augustine’s will be featuring some great and unique beers from across BC at their CAMRA Vancouver Summer Beer Festival this Saturday, August 14th. Saturday’s festival, the first CAMRA Vancouver festival held at St. Augustine’s, will feature over twenty beers from twenty BC breweries. Many of the beers featured will be cask-conditioned. These seasonal releases, experimental batches, and one-offs have all been crafted by local brewers with the discerning craft beer lover in mind.

Many brewers have gone beyond the use of brewer’s yeast in their offerings this weekend. These brewers have instead created sour or ‘wild’ beers with the use of lactic acid bacteria and Brettanomyces, a wild yeast traditionally viewed as a contaminant in the production of most beer styles. This weekend’s festival will feature three examples of these sour or otherwise wild beers from BC craft brewers.

Russell Brewing will have a pin of their 100% Brettanomyces beer entitled “Brett Lambicus and the P-Funk All-Stars”. As the name suggests, this is a pale beer fermented and aged six months exclusively with Brettanomyces Lambicus.

Iain Hill of Yaletown Brewing will have a cask of his Brick and Beam IPA cask-conditioned with Simcoe hops and Brettanomyces. Iain cultured this Brettanomyces strain from a bottle of Orval, which gives the IPA a sweet, fruity Brettanomyces aroma.

Dave Woodward over at High Mountain will have a keg of his Berliner Weisse, a light, refreshing sour wheat beer.  This beer underwent a secondary fermentation for several months with Lactobacillus delbrueckii to create what Dave describes as an extremely well attenuated beer with a light lactic nose and tart finish.

The above beers are just the beginning of the creative, interesting beers present at this weekend’s festival. Here’s a complete list of the casks and kegs at the CAMRA Vancouver Summer Beer Festival.

A New Chapter

Converting my guide to craft beer: drinking a Festbier at Gordon Biersch in Taipei.

You may have noticed that my posts have been coming a lot less regularly. That’s because I have started a new business venture with a friend that is not related to beer. It’s called Adventurocity, a travel company focused on Asia. (No, I have no plans to move back to Asia at this time.) My passion for beer is exceeded by that for travel, so my beer activities are now taking a back seat. Fortunately, I won’t necessarily find myself wanting for a good brew when on the road, but that depends on the country. My friends Josh Oakes and Sunshine Kessler have done a great job documenting the beer scene in a number of places. (They are currently in Malaysia.) There’s plenty of mass-market lager in Asia, but not a lot of indigenous craft beer – a good business opportunity for anyone wanting to start a brewpub or microbrewery and live overseas. Some brewers from North America and Europe are already doing this.

In starting this new chapter of my career, I have resigned as CAMRA Vancouver President; I no longer write for Northwest Brewing News and Urban Diner; and I no longer work for the Craft Brewers Guild of British Columbia. Although I initiated Vancouver Craft Beer Week, my role with VCBW is as a consultant, not as part of the executive. Nevertheless, I’m still very interested in what is happening in the craft beer scene here and hope, some day, we will have a beer culture that will rival that of Washington and Oregon. You’ll only reach high if you aim high.

CAMRA Vancouver Recognizes Local Beer Excellence

Central City brewer, Gary Lohin.

The Vancouver chapter of the Campaign for Real Ale has announced the results of its annual members poll recognizing local and regional excellence in brewing and beer service. Surrey’s Central City Brewing was awarded Best Local Brewpub; the Alibi Room Best Local Beer Cafe, Pub, or Restaurant; and Brewery Creek Liquor Store, Best Local Liquor Store for beer selection. This is the second year both the Alibi Room and Brewery Creek were rated the best in their categories.

With the growing popularity of cask-conditioned ale (Real Ale) in Vancouver, more establishments have been adding this type of beer to their offerings. For this reason, CAMRA Vancouver added a Best Local Cask Night to its list of awards. In a nod to its pioneering role in popularizing Real Ale in the city, Dix Barbecue and Brewery won this category and won silver for its winter cask ale festival. The Whip is also acknowledged for its Real Ale Sundays with a different cask every week supplied by R&B Brewing.

Since last year, Amber Jack’s Tap House, St. Augustine’s Restaurant & Lounge, and Yaletown Brewing have each begun offering Real Ale on a weekly or monthly basis. The Alibi Room now offers a continuously changing selection of three cask ales nightly. They celebrated their 100th beer menu rotation on December 3.

Canada’s First Beer Cocktail Competition

Canada’s first beer cocktail competition will be held at The Refinery in Vancouver on August 17, featuring beer from Whistler Brewing. It will be interesting to see what the local bartenders will come up with to expand the beer cocktail repertoire beyond a Black Velvet, Irish Car Bomb, Ogre Juice, and Red Eye.

Contestants will have to devise a cocktail using either Whistler Black Tusk Ale, Classic Pale Ale, Honey Lager, Premium Export Lager, or Weissbier. They will then have to create it live, behind the bar at The Refinery, using their own ingredients and the supplied beer.

Judging the competition will be Bruce Dean (President, Whistler Brewing), Chester Cary (Canada’s first Certified Cicerone), Joanne Sasvari (The Vancouver Sun), Andrew Morrison (Scout Magazine), and yours truly.

The winning bartender will receive a TaylorMade golf bag; a case of Whistler beer; and a day of golf, dinner, and drinks for two at Pemberton’s Big Sky Golf & Country Club, voted Best Course in BC by the Vancouver Sun Golf Guide 2009.

After the competition, General Manager, Lauren Mote, and her team will be serving a special Whistler Brewing Company beer cocktail list, along with paired canapés from Executive Chef Michael Carter. Carter was formerly the chef at Dix Barbecue and Brewery.

Whistler Brewing Cocktail Challenge
Monday, August 17 @ 3:00pm
The Refinery
1115 Granville Street, Vancouver

On the Brews Traveller Map?

Granville Island Brewing was one of the sponsors of the Culinary Tourism Society BC Conference.

I recently attended a culinary tourism conference at The Sutton Place Hotel put on by the Culinary Tourism Society BC. This is one of the fastest growing segments in global tourism, but BC is still a ways off from achieving its full potential. A lack of budget, co-operation, and co-ordination is holding us back.

This is also true when it comes to BC craft beer and the tourist. What are the chances that a visitor will only drink Canadian, Keith’s, Kokanee, Sleeman, or even Bud their whole time here? Given that these are amongst the top ten selling beer brands in the province, chances are great. Even beer aficionados have trouble finding convenient, comprehensive, up-to-date information. I just received an e-mail today from someone in Honolulu, asking what BC beers I would recommend his colleague bring back from a visit to Vancouver in the next few days. I have also gotten e-mails from CAMRA UK members looking for Real Ale.

It shouldn’t be this hard. While many individual craft brewers don’t have a lot of money for marketing, never mind the time to implement promotional activities, the word still has to get out somehow. It is harder to do this on an individual basis with a limited budget. This is why American craft brewers formed associations and guilds, pooling their resources by collaborating, not competing against each other. In BC, we’re still working on this primary step.

Meanwhile, the World Police & Fire Games are coming this year and the Olympics in 2010. Have the craft brewers organized the means to make the participants and spectators aware of their beer? What about a BC craft beer mixed pack that visitors can buy as a souvenir or as a gift for their beer-loving friends back home? Have the brewpubs and craft beer-friendly establishments come up with a handy reference that tourists can easily carry with them?

Sporting events, holidays, and festivals, however, are fleeting events. Erik Wolf, President and CEO of the International Culinary Tourism Association, one of the conference speakers, reiterated the importance of collaboration when faced with limited funds. He also emphasized the point of turning locals into ambassadors. Early adopters, if they enthusiastically embrace a product, will evangelize it for free. If craft brewers more closely involved their closest followers in product testing, events, etc., their promotional reach would extend much further and be more readily accepted, coming from friends or family members. In Washington and Oregon, the brewers guilds actually have their supporters organized — WABL, SNOB.

To be on the brews traveller map, B.C. doesn’t necessarily need to do anything that costs a lot of money. What money we do have, should be invested in those channels that are the most cost-effective, have the greatest reach, and achieve sustained exposure for locals and visitors.