With its abundance of craft breweries, it’s pretty clear that Victoria is a beer-drinking city, so a beer-specific week seems perfectly natural.
Enter Victoria Beer Week.
“There was a group of us that started meeting, all kinds of different people, but all related to beer,” explains Joe Wiebe, co-founder of the festival and author of Craft Beer Revolution. “Beer weeks have been happening in the States and Vancouver for a while, and we thought the time was right to do something like that in Victoria.”
Wiebe says that Victoria Beer Week has a worthy cause of expanding awareness and knowledge of beer.
Just as there are many kinds of brews, there are many kinds of beer drinkers as well, he explains.
“We really wanted to put something together with a wide variety of events so people with different interests related to beer could get involved,” says Wiebe.
If you’re not tired of classes yet, the festival offers many valuable learning opportunities.
“We have a few events that are specifically about education, teaching people about how to homebrew and how to taste beer,” says Wiebe.
For the foodie crowd, the festival offers food events, like a beer-paired brunch or pizza and a class on cooking with beer. And if history is more your style, they have that as well, with a seminar on the local history of beer.
“But it’s not just purely educational,” says Wiebe. “It’s about enjoying and appreciating beer culture as well.”
For that purpose, there are events like the Thunderdome, where organizers are asking 10 breweries to each come up with a new beer, with all 10 to be launched on that night.
“It’s at a really cool venue called Wheelies Café, and they’ll be serving food and we’ll have these different breweries there to talk about the beers,” says Wiebe.
Wheelies is just one example of a great Victoria venue helping to make the festival even better.
“Last year we had one cask night at the Victoria Public Market, and this year we’re adding a second one because it was so successful,” says Wiebe. “It’s such a cool space and we have the market vendors open during the event, so people can have food during it.”
According to Wiebe, Victoria Beer Week is just another example of the long love affair that Victoria residents have with beer.
“The beer culture here has been around for so long, since 1984 when Spinnakers opened, so we have this history that we can really build on,” says Wiebe. “People who are just visiting town, or are new to Victoria, can really learn about how great the scene is here and get really connected to these breweries that already have these long stories behind them.”
Victoria Beer Week
March 7 to 15
Various locations
victoriabeerweek.com