Great Canadian Beer Festival

Festival Location: Vancouver Island, Canada

Festival Type(s): Beer Festivals, Parties

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Singin' the Brews - A powerful liquid to lift all known steins

By: © Dave Preston 2009

Okay, I know lederhosen becomes you and slapping those ample red thighs keeps the accordion player in synch, but pull up a barrel and take a breather. It's time you and I talked about beer.

And since you'll soon be turning the fall clock back we'll begin by domesticating grain, so we can make bread, 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Now, when stored grain gets wet it begins to germinate, then if it dries again it becomes malt. Simply add rain then airborne yeast and before you can say "Dammit the grain store's leaking" you've got a fermented malt beverage. So if the good lord had meant us to drink pure spring water, He wouldn't have given us beer. (In His infinite wisdom He performed the same trick with fruit, but called it wine.)

If you turn to your 18th century BC centrefold of Ninkasi, the Asian goddess of brewing, you'll see her school song which describes how she made beer by mixing Sumerian bread with "aromatics" and letting it ferment in a big vat. Her beer was no doubt an acquired taste and was best drunk quickly, for two reasons. First, it probably tasted like the oil that later came out of her ground, which came to be known as Iraq, and secondly, she didn't know about hops.

Hops are green things that grow in temperate climates on tall bines, having flowers that contain resins and oils which smell and taste wonderful (okay, I'm biased) and act as a natural preservative. They first made an appearance in beer, we think, around 820 AD.

From there it seems that beer went from strength to strength, quenching thirsts and refreshing parts no other beverage had hitherto reached. The Mayflower docked early, and far north of its planned destination, because it ran out of beer. A passenger wrote, in December 1620: "We could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer." I'll remind you that Puritans of this era strictly regulated the drinking of beer, allowing only two quarts of it for breakfast.

In 1777 Joseph Priestly "discovered" carbon dioxide because of it and James Watt based his first commercial steam engine on a brewer's kettle he'd seen.

The middle of last century saw immigrants such as Eberhard Anheuser, Adolph Coors, Theodore Hamm, Frederick Pabst, Joseph Schlitz, Bernard Stroh, and Henry Weinhard, coming to North America, bringing with them brewing skills and lager recipes. Unfortunately, their once-proud names and reputations in the brewing industry have been spoiled by corporate successors who fell prey to the economies of scale, and cut corners on ingredients. Most of them now sell image instead of beer. However, in 1850 a lad of their ilk, William Steinberger, established the Victoria Brewery on the east side of Swan Lake, in Saanich. This was the first commercial brewery west of the Great Lakes and survived, in one form or another, until 1981.

So, we here on Vancouver Island have a beer history envied by the likes of cities with bigger breweries and stadiums. We also had a major hop-growing industry on Saanich Peninsula which supplied breweries up and down the west coast during thirsty days of goldrush fever. Apart from archival photos and the odd wild hop bine, alas, little remains. But we are, once again, a proud, coaster-sized mark on the national beer map; The Great Canadian Beer Festival is based in Victoria, and is about as likely to move as a Yorkshireman living next door to a brewery.

Each November the Victoria Conference Centre rings to the happy sound of several thousand glasses clinking a collective toast to the brewer's art. This year over 35 craft breweries from four provinces and four states will be represented, offering around 130 beers. Although the two-day event is strictly non-smoking, the sipping of rauchbier is allowed. This is a strong-flavoured beer made from smoked peat malt, the same used for making whisky.

If you're looking for a cold pitcher of mainstream suds, move along. This is real beer made by real people who care about quality, and they stand right behind the counter ready to tell you just how much they care, where they got the hops from and why they named the stout after a family pet. Samples are sold in four-ounce servings for $1 each and comparative gossip is encouraged. Imagine a wine tasting without the snobbery, price tag, or spitting, and you'll get the idea.

There'll even be a seminar there on how to judge beer, but if you slip behind this bracket I'll spare you the wait. (Hold up your glass and enjoy the colour, watch the tiny bubbles spiral their way to the top - the slower they rise the more body the beer has. Look at the head on top of the beer, which some prefer to be deep and uneven, made up of tiny bubbles. Next, take a good sniff and appreciate the blend of hops and malt in the aroma. Take a good mouthful and move it all around your mouth to experience the flavour and feel the body with your tongue. Then, swallow and wait for the finish or aftertaste. Finally, talk to someone about what you have just seen, smelled, tasted, and felt. If you like it, it's a good beer - congratulate the brewer. If you don't, move on and look for one that suits you.) There, wasn't that easy, and just think how much fun it could be with 6,000 friends.

All this, just because 10,000 years ago someone let the grain get wet. Okay, see you at the festival. Wear the lederhosen if you must, but leave the accordion.

Check out the Great Canadian Beer Festival at http://www.gcbf.com and Dave's site at http://dave.pwac.net/

by Dave Preston

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