What’s better than a cold beer on a hot summer day? A cold beer, great weather, live music, games, and lots of beer lovers!
Vancouver Brewfest brings the local brewers together in one massive event that lets all of us beer lovers find and try multiple beers in hopes of finding new beers to add to our favorites list.
Mix in Bearpong (giant beer pong), locals bands, amazing vendors, and it all equals out to a fun time.
Pictured above: Kafiex Roasters, Second Player Score, Olivers Gourmet, Fifty Fifty Print
Friday was the perfect time to cruise around, hang out, and start tasting all the great beers.
Saturday was the first ever brewers keg toss. I was joined by the super awesome Chris from Rusty Aperture Photography to help cover this. Events like these are like weddings, you need to cover more angles, so having a great community of photographers willing to help out is amazing.
There were points for each pool depending on how far they were from the line. Mill City Brewing won for most points while the newcomers, Northwest Passage Craft Brewing won for style points.
People’s choice was, of course, voted by the people.
First place was Heavy Metal Brewing with their Nuttin’ Else Matters Peanut Butter Stout.
Second was North Jetty with Another F’ing Raspberry Hef
And third was Brothers Cascadia’s You Like A’ Da Juice. This was their first Brewfest, so congrats to them!
My recommendations for the beers that I had there:
I am in no way a beer expert, I just really enjoy the craft that goes into it…and of course the taste. So here are my three favorites from the fest.
Ghost Runner’s Brewery brought this fantastic Gose that I could not get enough of. Chasing Fluffy Pink Unicorns was my go-to of the festival. Here is the description straight from Ghost Runners site:
“Delightful and refreshing, this unique raspberry Gose style ale is full of powder plush fluffiness. Brewed with rosehips, coriander, pink peppercorns, a 4-blend lactobacillus, sea salt, and dry-hopped with 3lbs of hibiscus gives CFPU an amazing light fruit and tart flavor. We promise, no unicorns were harmed in the making of this beer. We harness their magic humanely.”
It wasn’t super heavy, but not light either. The salt at the end really added a nice aftertaste as well. I believe they still have it in their tap room, so if you want to try a new style, I would definitely go and grab some of that.
North Jetty‘s Another F’in Raspberry Hef, which is exactly what it says it is. The thing that made this stand out to me was the fact that it wasn’t overly sweet. Too many times I’ve had a fruit beer and its just too much fruit and not enough beer.
Everybody’s Brewing Hoppy AF. This one came as a recommendation from Devon at Loowit. He said other than his own beer (which is always amazing, I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad beer from Loowit) that this is the one he goes for. Now I haven’t followed the trends with the super hoppy beer, in fact, im just now developing the taste, but this one was fantastic.
“This Double IPA is light gold in color and juicy! Huge hop flavors and aromas come from massive amounts of Galaxy, Citra, and Chinook in the whirlpool and through double dry hopping. True to its name, this one is Hoppy AF!”
In all, having a lovely, relaxing weekend in the middle of my wedding season was amazing and it doesn’t hurt that I get to hang out with my husband there as he helps with the Cascadia Brewers Alliance. P.S. if you live in the Vancouver area and want to learn how to make your own beer, head over to Bader’s and joining the alliance!