It’s been a busy month for us at CAMRA Vancouver – we have been busy organizing the first ever Vancouver Craft Cider Festival happening later in November, we have been preparing for appearances at the Burnaby Beer Festival and Coquitlam Beer Festival, we spent some time at the BC Beer Awards and have been hard at work with our friends at the Tri-Cities Cask fest on a few initiatives! Learn more about what we are up to below.
I am sure you have seen it on Facebook, Twitter or in various articles, CAMRA Vancouver is hosting the first ever Vancouver Craft Cider Festival at the Beaumont Gallery on November 27th! We are beyond excited at that this event has received the support that it has in the community and cannot wait to bring some of BC’s finest ciders to the people of Vancouver. Many people have asked what it is that sets this apart from events like CiderWISE – which we have done for the last few years. Vancouver Craft Cider Fest focuses on BC-owned and operated cideries for one. At CiderWISE, we saw cider from Oregon, Washington, BC and Spain. The ciders at this event are 100% BC ciders! We have 17 confirmed cideries for the event coming in from all areas of BC, be it the interior, the GVA or Vancouver Island. In fact, the demand from vendors was so high, we actually had to turn a few people away (even 17 is higher than we had initially planned for.) This event is a great opportunity for CAMRA to showcase a part of the beer scene that is lesser known. Our province has an absolutely booming cider industry and some incredible apples to work with. We don’t want that fact lost amidst all the tasting, so we will be having an education component highlighting BC Land based cideries courtesy of the BC Farm Crafted Cider Association. Additionally, we will be having our friends at Orchard and the Sea running education on the social history of cider! This will be an amazing event, and we are so excited to put it on. While this event sold out very quickly, we have plans to expand the event next year so we can meet the demand we are seeing for it. Due to the HUGE amount of interest and community support with this event, we’ll be expanding to a larger venue and including even more cideries for a second edition of Vancouver Craft Cider Fest happening in 2017!
We are going to be present at the 2nd annual Burnaby Beer Festival on November 12th to talk about CAMRA’s mission and what we are doing to promote beer in the lower mainland. Additionally, we will be around at the Coquitlam Craft Beer Festival which we are excited to have as a platform to discuss the changes we have seen in the Tri-Cities and in Coquitlam specifically. We will be talking with people in the area and garnishing awareness and support for lounge licensing amendments to the newly rezoned areas that allow for commercial breweries to open up. I am very exciting to be engaging with a Coquitlam community that is (literally) thirsty for change from the brewery side of things!
We also spent some time at the BC Beer Awards this past month. Once again, this was a sensational event bringing in the best and the brightest from BC’s brewing scene under one roof. This event always highlights the fact that we have one of the best brewing scenes on the planet. I love talking to the brewers and owners and hearing about all the innovation that is going on in our community! It is awesome. In addition to their regular contributions, brewers were encouraged to brew a cask mild for the event. We had a ginger mild that we brewed for the event in conjunction with the fabulous people at Bridge Brewing in North Vancouver. Being paired with a table next to Vanbrewers, I was a bit nervous, but I think ours held up to it! (which, by the way if you are a home brewer in the Vancouver area and want to learn more or get to know the local homebrew scene check them out!) We offered a great education section at our table which included an aroma bar highlighting the various components of the Mild style as well as its storied history in the UK. As always, the event was a blast and we cannot wait to be a part of it again next year!
What’s next for CAMRA Vancouver in the Community? We will be at the Tri-Cities Cask festival on November 19th and continuing our Safe Ride Home initiative. The people at the TCCF have offered a “bus ticket add-on option” on top of festival admission. This comes at no extra cost to festival goers and is sponsored by CAMRA Vancouver. Anyone that wanted that option simply needs to swing by our table at the festival and pick up a compass ticket to ensure that they are getting a safe ride home. This is the kind of initiative we would like to start offering more regularly as it falls very nicely in with our strong stance against drinking and driving.
We also plan to be involved in the Tri-Cities Pro-Am Cask Festival in January. This is an incredible event where amateur and professional brewers work together to try and offer the best beer they can! The people at the fest have offered us a pre-sale code for tickets; just use the code “CAMRA” when buying tickets here to open up the tickets and get exclusive pre-sale access! There will also be a specialty cask at the event that CAMRA members will have exclusive access to, so make sure your cards are valid so you can get that special beer.
Phew, that’s a lot going on! Cheers!
David Perry
President
CAMRA BC – Vancouver Branch
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