Victoria Beer Week

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On Tuesday, March 7th, Victoria Beer Week kicks off for nine days and nights of celebrating quality BC craft beer.

Home brewing workshops, specialty beer events, beer and food pairings, swanky brewery crawls, cooking with beer, beer trivia and good ol’ cask opening parties are just a sampling of the Victoria Beer Weekevents.

Such festivals do an excellent job of identifying and popularizing trends. Victoria’s taco food trucks and taco joints are re-inventing the taco with west coast flare. Sample beer and tacos at The Fort Common, a hidden courtyard tucked behind the buildings at Fort and Blanchard Street.

All About The Wood, a brand new event, celebrates the rare and special qualities of local barrel-aged beers. As only a select number of BC’s best breweries are capable of aging beers in wood, these will be very exclusive beers!

The production and popularity of sour beers continues to grow, and so does the festival’s Pucker Up event celebrating all beers tart and sour.  The event has outgrown its origins at the Churchill Pub. In its fourth year, Pucker Up will now happen in the Victoria Public Market.

Don’t be scared off by the notion that all sour beers make you “pucker up”. From gentle tart to out-right sour, each batch is quite unique.

Traditional sour-beer-making techniques used to require months or years to move through the souring process, thus resulting in market resistance to high pricing. New techniques, however, have made sour beer brewing faster and easier with no drop in quality. Sours these days are affordable!

This new technique is called kettle souring. It allows brewers to produce a mouth-watering sour in about the same time it takes to make any other beer. The result is a generous pour of acidic, refreshing beer at standard pint prices.

Sour beers are making their way into the local beer selections at  Lucky’s Liquor in Nanaimo’s Country Club Centre. Most of them are limited releases. We post their availability on our Facebook page so no one misses out.

At the Pucker Up event, Four Winds Brewing Company out of Vancouver will showcase its Nectarous dry-hopped sour.  Aptly named for its  fresh and fruity aromas, this beer won the coveted Beer of the Year Award last year at the Canadian Brewers Awards.

Sour beers are the absolute best for food pairing and Nectarous is no exception. The aroma is sharp, displaying passion-fruit, peach and nectarine.  The flavour is very fruit-forward with a citrus bite.

Paired up with Kung Pao Chicken, a Caesar salad with shrimp, steamed mussels or any salad you can imagine, this brew sings along with the food. The high carbonation scrubs your palate, getting you ready for your next mouthful.

Spring is just around the corner. The warmer weather speaks of crisp fresh flavours. I can’t think of a better way to start than with a great sour beer at Victoria Beer Week, made right here in BC.

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