Barley Mowat 

As you may recall, I’ve had some history with Whistler Brewing’s beers on this blog. As a result of that, I’m surprised that Whistler hasn’t posted pictures of me at every LDB in the province with instructions to not sell their product to me.

If they did, it didn’t work. The Groucho Marx glasses might’ve helped, I guess. In any event, I recently found myself staring down a bottle of their new Lost Lake Unfiltered IPA. I could feel my bad beer hormones getting all stirred up just looking at it.

Then I tasted it. What a let down. Not only was this beer not awful, it actually was flirting with being… good. I mean, it’s not great, but it’s not bad either. Yet, even though I liked it, I still have a big issue with this beer’s label.

And I don’t just mean that the label is missing Lost Lake’s bikini-clad sunbathers… um… what was my point again?

You see, it says “unfiltered” right there on the bottle. I’ve been semi-outspoken on this point before, but let me subtlety say it again here so I’m on record: BEER SHOULD NOT BE FILTERED. Leave the yeast in, folks. Think of it this way: have you ever had unfiltered or bottle conditioned beer and thought “this would be so much better if there wasn’t any yeast here”? How about the other way around?

Putting “unfiltered” right in the title of a beer might seem like a step in the right direction, and I guess it is a bit, but what I see when I read that is “all our beers are filtered. Except this one” or maybe even “not filtering beer is so weird that we just had to put it on the label. Aren’t we kooky?”

Anyway, the beer. This isn’t a big IPA like Driftwood’s Fat Tug, but it is a nice take on the milder English style. There’s lots to keep you interested: the hops are floral and fruity, the yeast holds the body together, and the sugars aren’t over done.

Overall, hands down the best beer from Whistler Brewing I’ve ever had: a solid “okay.”

Tasting notes:

NOSE Mild hop nose consisting of tropical fruit tones (grapefruit/passion fruit)
APPEARANCE Slightly hazy, but still quite a clear, orangey, amber. Thick persistent head.
TASTE Strong bittering hops, but overall a good tasting IPA. Yeast character is balanced and quite nice.
SHOULD I BUY IT? Yes. It’s cheap, it’s good, and buying it will encourage another mediocre brewery to brew better beer.

Coles notes:

Vancouver Craft Beer Week, that annual celebration of all things awesome and right with this city, is coming back for yet another year. To that end, they launched their website, event listings, and ticket sales all in one fell swoop. Notably improved from last year was both the ticketing partner (Eventbrite) and the timing (noon vs midnight) of the launch.

Ticketing was so vastly improved, in fact, that Hoppapolooza sold out in thirty minutes instead of three hours. Yup, sorry, it’s all gone now. Yes, I got tickets. Thanks for asking! Don’t worry about the other events–they won’t sell out for some time yet. If you’re stuck with too much money and no Hoppapolooza tickets, what should you do? Here’s my guide for VCBW 2013:

1. Hoppapolooza IV. Yeah, I know both sessions sold out, but I have to rub it in a bit more. This is probably the single best beer event in BC. Imagine Nigel Springthorpe (Alibi Room) calling in every favour owed him to put together the most amazing beer list any BC geek has ever seen. That’s Hoppapolooza. Pro Tip: If you didn’t get tickets, try lining up the next day at 5pm to sample the leftovers. Usually Nigel goes a bit nuts, and even the most dedicated crowd of beer geeks can drink all of the awesomeness in one go. Or wait for tickets to show up on Craigslist at a 300% markup.

2. Cicerone vs Sommelier. I always contend that beer can trump wine for food pairings. Not everyone agrees with me, but even most of the naysayers admit it’s close. Wine v Beer dinners are always lots of fun, and this should be no exception.

3. cialis soft gels. This one won’t be special so much for the awesome beer on hand (perhaps mostly because Portland Craft ALWAYS has awesome PDX beer on tap), but more for the people. The brewmasters of Gigantic (Ben Love), Ninkasi (Jamie Floyd), Upright (Alex Ganum), The Commons (Mike Wright), Alameda (Carston Haney), and Occidental (Ben Engler) will be there. When you cram this much US brewing talent in a small space, I virtually guarantee some Canuck brewers will also turn up.

The rest is your standard mix of festivals, dinners, and general beer-love. While I’m jaded enough to look at the master list and find it a bit boring, 99.9% of the beer drinking public is not me. No matter what tickets you pick up, you’ll find yourself in a room surrounded by beer geeks. You’ll have a great evening, make some new friends, and then want to take a shower to get all that beard hair off. Cuz eewwww.

The hot topic du jour in BC craft brewing circles is the City of Vancouver deciding whether or not to allow local breweries to set up and operate tasting lounges. Well, okay, maybe it’s not the hot topic in all of BC. Municipalities other than Vancouver have no issue with letting breweries sell you their beer. It’s just us lucky folks in No Fun City being told to, well, not have fun.

Paddy over at the VanEast Beer Blog has a great summary of all the details here(CAMRA also has you covered here). You should go read that and then, the next time you see his grinning bald head in public, buy him a Fat Tug. What Paddy is not admitting to online is that a lot of the progress here has been his doing. Sure, local breweries have absolutely been active, and the mayor appears to be on the side of good, but Paddy has been working the political channels non-stop in the interest of getting things done.

So what’s all the fuss about, then? If you didn’t click the link above it all boils down to this: earlier this year the BC Government made changes to the Liquor Act that would allow a brewery to sell, onsite, more than 12 ounces of beer to each client per day (as they are currently limited to). Sounds easy enough to implement, but the City jumped in the way and insisted on the additional requirement of a Liquor Primary License for breweries that want to sell that second tasting glass of beer.

Liquor Primaries, in addition to being notoriously difficult and expensive to obtain, are not allowed in industrial zones in Vancouver which–you guessed it–is where all the breweries are located. And thus a Catch-22 was born: you can either brew the beer or sell a 13th ounce per day, but not both. It should be noted that this is all the City’s rules–the Province indicates that no Liquor Primary is required at all. Since the Province are the ones that make up the rules in the first place, you’d think their opinion would matter, but I guess that’s why we don’t get politics.

It’s mostly just the hug fights during parliament that confuse me.

For what it’s worth, Mayor Gregor Robertson appears to be quite supportive of the latest batch of craft breweries, even going so far as to tweet “Working on new regs to allow tasting lounges + more support for #Vancouver’s #craftbrew industry”. If the story holds, we should seem some progress in May. Of course, I trust politicians about as much as I trust that my $5 handed to the sketchy street guy is really going to food (if anything, he seemed even “hungrier” when he came back 90 minutes later and asked for more).

The one thing that keeps politicians honest, though, is the public eye. So tweet away at Mr. Mayor (genuine cialis australia) and let him know that walking into a brewery and being able to try more than half of a single beer is something you’re keen to do in Vancouver.