It’s time once again for the Great Canadian Beer Festival, reminding Victorians that, yes, we are the Portland of Canada when it comes to craft beer. The local beer landscape continues to change, with new breweries opening every year across the province. Gerry Hieter, chairman and co-founder of the Great Canadian Beer Festival (GCBF), is excited by the quality of what BC breweries have to offer, and the festival is a way for Victorians to share that excitement.
These days, practically every restaurant in Victoria serves local brews, but this was not always the case. Although citing the reasoning as “purely selfish,” Hieter remembers wanting to hold a festival to “increase the awareness for craft beers, thereby having the local bars and restaurants introduce more of these craft beers to their selection, so we could drink them ourselves.”
Beer has clearly made a dramatic comeback from when the only beers on most taps in Canada were Molson Canadian or Labatt’s Blue.
“Beer got a pretty rough ride in North America for about 70 or 80 years. From prohibition onwards it turned into a commodity,” says Hieter. “What we have now is just only really getting back to where we were at the turn of the last century.”
Historically, Victoria is no stranger to a robust beer culture. The modern conception of beer, however, has changed.
Not only does today’s beer come in all kinds of styles, it comes in flavours: Chai, Pumpkin, Hibiscus, and Vanilla Bean Espresso are a few of the offerings listed from the breweries appearing at GCBF.
Maybe some beer purists will be offended, but it’s really a reflection of how far beer has come: it is a drink for all palates, unafraid of a little irreverence. Speaking of all palates, gluten-free beer spreads the love even further, showing how even brewers want their beer to be inclusive.
“Beer is just being recognized now by a whole generation of people who have grown up with craft beer as more than just beer: it’s something you can sip reading a book, it’s something you can drink with friends, it’s something you can pair with cheese or chocolate and food. It’s a phenomenon,” says Hieter.
Craft beer is innovative, but it also looks to the past for ideas. One tradition that is seeing small-scale revival is the method of service: beer drawn from casks, unlike the modern keg system requiring added carbonation.
“It’s a return to the way beer used to be served when it was alive,” says Hieter. “It wasn’t filtered, it wasn’t pasteurized; it was full of healthy little yeast cells and plenty of good stuff.” (Cask ales are still not very common, though there will be selections available at the festival.)
GCBF has a cross-Canada lineup of craft breweries, with some American ones as well. “We get a lot of grief if we don’t bring in some of the American brands. Some of them are so good that we always try to have some of them here,” says Hieter, adding that “there might come a day when we pretty much have [only] BC breweries,” due to the increase in their numbers.
The Great Canadian Beer Festival
3-8 pm Friday, September 16 and 12-6 Saturday, September 7
Royal Athletic Park
gcbf.com