The Spotlight is a series of interviews with the craft beer heroes behind local organizations who are helping grow the beer scene in our fine city. In this issue, we speak to Rebecca Whyman, local beer blogger and beer radio personality.
Much of my own beer education is credited to the wealth of knowledge Rebecca possesses on the subject. Every time we’ve ever sat down at a local tasting event, brewery or similar, delicious beer is often paired with her succinct input about what’s in our glasses. I like to believe that I know a great deal about beer, and am constantly both surprised and delighted to hear her weigh in, often making points and contributing in ways that had never occurred to me. Many of us in our community are familiar with her work, and she has earned the respect of her peers and local beer aficionados alike. I recently sat down with Rebecca and had her speak to topics such as canning , the Elysian / InBev situation, and the misrepresentation of non-craft beers as craft.
You’ve been heavily involved with craft beer in Vancouver for a long time. Tell us how you discovered beer, and if you can remember it, what your first craft beer was?
I was really slow to come to beer, which is funny to think about now. 
In university, I wasn’t a beer drinker until I started playing rugby – at which point the yellow fizzy stuff was the norm. I was able to finish one, but I never liked it. Then I was a cider drinker, and eventually I went to Texas. I had been drinking more beer since playing rugby again, and it was there that I discovered some beers that weren’t *as* bad. I went to a supermarket, and they had a huge section full of beer. You were allowed to buy singles , so I went through and picked things that had really cool labels. My mind was blown: these weren’t Canadian, Coors, or Budweiser. All this crazy looking stuff with amazing labels. The only one I really remember from that time was Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale, which I liked because it had a skeleton on the front of the label. That was the one that made a standout impression. This had me thinking “Wow, look at all these great beers Americans were able to choose from!”. I didn’t make the connection that we probably have some up here [in Vancouver] too. One day I was at Chambar, and a friend was eating mussels with a Dead Frog Nut Brown Ale. I tried the combination, and I was blown away. That was my first craft beer moment in Vancouver.
You have been quoted as declaring 2015 “The Year of the Sour”, and many breweries are now souring due to the explosion in popularity. Give us an idea of who is or will be offering sours around town?
A bunch of people around town are making or are starting to make sours. James from Storm has been making them forever, but the style didn’t catch on until recently. Iain Hill has been brewing his Oud Bruin for a long time as well, and that will be coming out via Strange Fellows; maybe not this year, but almost certainly next year. It needs to age awhile. Four Winds is making a bunch of nice sours, Steel and Oak did their Smoke & Sour in collaboration with them, Powell Street is working on them, and Storm of course continues to make their sours. Parallel 49 is doing them now , too. So far, everybody is doing a really good job on them, too.
With the advent of systems like the canpedo and similar on-the-fly canning, do you see cans as a viable competitor to the growler, and is it something you expect we will see an increase in the number of breweries packaging their products this way?
I think cans definitely have a lot of advantages over bottles, and it seems like a lot of brewers are starting to recognize that as well. The Canpedo, or “Crowler”? I think it’s a great idea in theory, but I don’t know how many new breweries are going to jump on board with it given the initial expense to get it ready to go. As far as the Crowler name, I’m not aware of anyone other than Oskar Blue’s using it, given that the term “Crowler” is trademarked by them. It does have advantages over the growler, of course, in that it’s lighter to carry and stays fresher, longer.
What are your go-to styles, and what are you most looking forward to this year?
Sours, definitely. IPAs, of course. I do like my hops, so if you’re going to make a super hoppy pale ale, I’m going to be good with that. Session ales, too. Maybe I should have named this the “Year of the Session Ale” as well, because session beers have taken off in a big way.
Some breweries are getting negative attention for the way they choose to describe their beers: “session IPA”s that in many cases are higher than 6-7% ABV. Do you feel these are appropriate ways to market beer?
I think it confuses people if you are tossing around contradictory terms like a “session double IPA” . I feel like that is a misnomer: I wonder if they are using the term session simply to describe it as being “so delicious you would want to drink lots and lots of it”, but I think that does a disservice to the whole industry, because it’s hard enough giving people the vocabulary to talk about and describe the same things. I have people that say to me “I like light beers, I want a light beer”, and they’ll go to a brewery and are told “No, we don’t do light beers” or “We do have a session beer”, when the entire time the person was trying to describe a beer that simply light in color. Or the opposite: maybe they wanted a pilsner but didn’t know or understand the terminology, and ended up getting something else for lack of being able to describe what they were looking for. We’re just confusing people if we’re going to ruin our own terms if we aren’t sticking to standards.
A number of craft beer pubs continue to pour 
Elysian under the banner of being craft beer – how do you feel about this?
I think that was a bit of a double-edged sword. A lot of the Elysian beer that’s out there in bars right now was made before all of that happened. I think we’re on the cusp of beer that they’ve produced before and after the purchase. It’s my understanding that AB-InBev hasn’t been very hands-on with the the operations at Elysian, and that it’s still the original crew brewing the beer. From what I know, AB-InBev’s involvement extends to distributing their beer, not producing it, with the goal of national distribution. They will still be brewing for their local market, and their flagship will be brewed elsewhere to produce the amounts needed to satisfy other markets. That said, I don’t think it’s cool to pretend you’re a craft operation when you’re not: shadow brands and marketing non-craft under the guise of being something it isn’t. Most people know Elysian was purchased, that Cantwell left the operation, and that is fairly telling, to me. Craft beer pubs that serve Elysian and insist, sell it as craft without a caveat that they are still carrying it due to an existing relationship/contract should probably make it clear to their customers that, ‘FYI, Elysian: formerly craft, and now owned by AB-InBev.’
In contrast, you have companies like Coors/Miller who are creating Blue Moon, which is not and never has been craft brewed but it is being marketed as such. They have come under fire for misleading consumers with their labelling.
Nowhere on it’s label does it say it is brewed by Miller/Coors. It’s marketed as a craft beer, is pretending to be a craft beer, and that’s just wrong. There’s nothing craft about it, and that’s why they’re being taken to court now. I don’t know whether the case will get off the ground, but it shows something that somebody cared enough about their beer to feel really ripped off when they were told that this beer that they thought was craft, wasn’t craft brewed at all. It does beg the argument that “if they enjoyed it this whole time, does it make a difference that it isn’t actually a craft beer?”. If you’re paying a premium price, and you believe all of the things that embody the spirit of craft beer are in that beer, you do like it better. You’re willing to pay more for it believing it was made with quality ingredients, made with care and not on a large assembly line with who knows how many adjuncts in it. That’s what’s pulling people towards craft beer, and why people are willing to pay more for it. It comes with all of these things with it. Someone cared enough to brew it themselves, cared enough about the ingredients and the process, tweak and play with the recipe, and didn’t sacrifice quality to reduce cost.
Which two local breweries would you most like to see a collaboration with, and what style of beer would it be?
There’s so many different ways I could go with this, because I’d love to see local breweries teaming up with those that are in the far-flung places, so that we’d have access to a whole different range of beers and breweries that we don’t normally see much of or get exposure to here. I’ve certainly never been to Saanich for Category 12, and it would be great to see a local collaboration. I’ve been thinking about things like Spruce Tip ales, the type that you don’t really see a lot here in the city. Even that something that is brewed with nettles, or other ingredients that are local to somewhere outside of the city. Even golden ales: not a lot of places are doing golden ales.
Jeremy Noonan – Community Liaison, CAMRA BC – Vancouver Branch
@jerryvillainous
Elysian under the banner of being craft beer – how do you feel about this?
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