A pair of new books offers a taste of B.C.’s craft brewing industry
By JOE WIEBE, Special to the Sun May 12, 2011
For the past week, Vancouver beer geeks have been in heaven. Since Mayor Gregor Robertson proclaimed the city’s second annual Craft Beer Week open last Friday, there have been more than 60 beer-related events at a variety of bars, restaurants and other venues. (If you’ve missed out you might still be able to enjoy the final event of the week: the Brewery Creek BC Beer Festival at the Beatty Street Drill Hall from noon to 5 p.m. today. Check www.vancouvercraftbeerweek.com for details.)
There are two recent books describing the craft beer scene in B.C. — both by authors from elsewhere, one south of the border and one east across the mountains in Alberta.
Portland is nicknamed Beervana, and for good reason. Although the city is roughly the same size as Vancouver, it boasts more than 35 brewing facilities (compared with 16 in Vancouver, if you count the Fraser Valley and North Shore). Lisa M. Moore, the self-described “Beer Goddess,” is a Portland writer who hosts a weekly radio show called Beer O’Clock and writes for numerous beer-related magazines.
Craft Beers of the Pacific Northwest, Morrison’s first book, is primarily focused on Oregon and Washington states, but she also includes a chapter on British Columbia with sections describing Vancouver, the Sea to Sky Corridor, Vancouver Island and the Southern Interior.
The book looks good, with lots of photos, maps and information boxes. And it is well written; Morrison employs an entertaining, readable style that imparts a lot of information to the reader without becoming repetitive or stale.
Morrison’s bias as a Portland beer writer becomes clear on the first page of the B.C. chapter when she argues that there is “a decidedly British accent in most of the craft beers.” She goes on for the rest of the page to position B.C.’s craft beer scene as being not as hop-focused as it is south of the border: “the beer culture here has a lighter palate than those in Oregon and Washington.” The introduction ends with an almost apologetic plea: “My suggestion to travellers accustomed to American hoppy beers is to enter B.C. with an open mind and a sense of adventure, and drink in all the region has to offer.”
While I don’t think she meant it quite this way, it comes across as: the beer isn’t that great up in B.C., at least not yet, but they’ll catch up to us one day.
Especially frustrating after that opening is that Morrison’s coverage of B.C.’s beer scene is significantly lacking. There are some glaring omissions. In the section on Vancouver, she fails to mention St. Augustine’s, one of the city’s top beer bars with more than 25 craft beers on tap. She also leaves out Granville Island Brewing and Dockside Brewing. And she makes no mention of the city’s burgeoning cask beer scene, which has become so popular there are now cask beer events somewhere in the city virtually every night of the week.
This might seem to be nitpicking, but she also chooses not to mention Yaletown Brewing’s Brick and Beam IPA in that pub’s write-up. Considering it was named Beer of the Year in the 2010 BC Beer Awards and is a prime example of a beer a hop-crazy Portland drinker would love, its inclusion should be automatic.
Similarly, she barely even mentions Surrey’s Central City Brewing, voted Canadian Brewery of the Year for 2010, and even when she does, it is inexplicably in the Sea to Sky Corridor section, where she makes reference to Central City’s brewer, Gary Lohin, having worked at Sailor Hagar’s brew pub in North Vancouver. She does recommend looking for Central City’s brews at the Alibi Room, but otherwise she does not describe the brewery or its beers at all. This is a big lapse: Lohin is Vancouver’s top brewmaster and everything he brews is considered mandatory tasting by the city’s beer geeks.
I expected more from Morrison’s book and, ultimately, it was Beer Quest West, by Jon C. Stott, an English professor emeritus from the University of Alberta, that impressed me more.
Stott’s approach was to travel around Alberta and B.C., sampling beers wherever he went and interviewing the people behind the brews. The resulting book is much more entertaining and comprehensive, offering nearly 150 pages on B.C. beers, compared with Morrison’s 30-odd.
Stott covers B.C. in three sections: the Interior and Yukon; Greater Vancouver and the Lower Mainland; and Vancouver Island. He leaves no stones unturned; as a (perhaps self-described) beer expert myself, I thought I knew every brewery in B.C., but he found a few I hadn’t heard of, let alone tried. His approach is more objective in the sense that he does not have much of a bias toward any one style of beer.
While Beer Quest West does not include maps, it does offer a great deal of historical background on the brewing industry in B.C., as well as useful appendices on brewing terms, the brewing process and beer styles. All in all, it’s an excellent book for anyone interested in learning more about the province’s booming craft beer scene.
Joe Wiebe writes about books, beer, sports and culture. Read more at www.joewiebe.com or www.thirstywriter.com.
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