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Sending off 2022 in style
A round-up of the best-of for the last newsletter of 2022
Joseph Lavoie
December 20, 2022
Good morning!
With the holidays officially around the corner, Geoff and I will be taking some time off over the break so we can plan for 2023 and charge our batteries. We'll be back in your inbox on January 3, 2023.
To cap out 2022, we have a mix of facts, holiday recommendations, and a roundup of our most popular content since we launched The Beer Loop in May.
We hope you enjoy today's newsletter. It's the kind of newsletter we hope you come back to often during the break.
Thank you so much for being a subscriber. We hope you get a chance to rest, relax, recover, and enjoy BC's finest craft beer!
– Joseph Lavoie
THE BEER LOOP
By the Numbers
We launched The Beer Loop over the May long weekend this year. We started small, mostly sharing new releases and events with friends and family. But since then, we have grown The Beer Loop community and hope to continue bringing you fun beer content that perks up your inbox in 2023. Some fun facts and figures form our first seven months:
81: The number of newsletter editions we have sent
126,000: The number of times The Beer Loop has appeared in inboxes
500+: The number of new beer releases we reported on
3: The number of professional brewers and founders who have shared their favourite BC beers
16: The number of patios on our list of best brewery patios in Vancouver
1: Winner of our Blue Buck vs Fat Tug vote off
BEER RECOMMENDATIONS
Holiday beers worth enjoying this year
We had no shortage of holiday-inspired beer releases this month. Many of these feature dark roasts, coffee, vanilla, cookies, nutmeg, and ginger snap. With so many options, we thought we'd ask Redditors in the /r/VancouverCraftBeer community for their holiday recommendations. Here's what they suggest:
Best Deal - Four Winds Boreas
A barrel-aged imperial stout for $5/can. This one was conditioned on a variety of fresh Kentucky bourbon barrels, featuring a mix of 18-month and 6-month-old imperial stouts. It's an indulgent 11% treat with aromas of coffee, dark chocolate and a luscious mouthfeel with a bourbon note to round it all out.
On New Year's Eve - Dageraad Anno
This selection had broad consensus as the beer to enjoy on December 31, from fans and brewers alike. What makes it interesting is that you can taste previous year's versions. If you make your way to the brewery, you can pick up a vertical pack of Anno, including vintages from 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. It's a great way to taste how a beer transforms as it ages.
The beer itself is a strong golden ale brewed with Okanagan pears and Indian coriander. The beer is bottle conditioned with a house yeast and Brettanomyces for a funky and fruity kick.
Any Time: Strange Fellows Krampus
Along with Anno, this special release is an annual tradition for some. With good reason. It pours a dark red/light brown colour with Belgian Candi, dark raisin, and apple popping out of the glass. Your mouth is then treated to sweet malt flavours on contact. These flavours then open up to reveal brown sugar and rum. To cap it all off, you get a dry, peppery finish, which surprises you given the sweet start.
The Full Roster
The full list of holiday beer recommendations:
Dageraad Antwerpen
Four Winds Triplicity
33 Acres Euphoria
Northpaw Christmas Cream Ale
Lighthouse Depth Charge
Dageraad Lekkers
Hoyne Gratitude
Driftwood Old Cellar Dweller
Central City Thor's Hammer
Vancouver Island Brewing Hermanator
BEER RECOMMENDATIONS
🎁 12 days, 12 beers
If you're looking to drink along with the pros, or gift an awesome mix-pack to the beer lover in your life, why not take the beers that Dan Webster, Samantha Lindeman, and Brandon Schultz curated in their perfect BC mix-pack? With both Dan and Brandon including Fat Tug on their list, it would get two spots in the mix-pack, but we doubt anyone would complain.
Here is your perfect 12-pack to enjoy for every day of Christmas.
Persephone Goddess Golden Ale, which has "just enough hops and bitterness to keep you sipping and wanting more.
Wildeye Belgian Blond Rosé for breakfast lunch, or dinner.
Container Forty Footer for soaking in the hot tub or for some apres-ski.
Superflux Happiness with its "colourful notes of tropical fruit, pine sap, and a medium body of sweet malt.
Wildeye Czech Pilsner, with its "citrus hop notes and butter cracker body."
Driftwood Fat Tug (2x), because this is the beer that has inspired so many brewers.
Studio Brewing Daisy Chain for when you have hop fatigue.
North Point Beermosa for the ultimate breakfast beer.
Persephone Dry Irish Stout to go with your late-night ice cream fix.
Yellow Dog Play Dead for chilling with friends.
Four Winds Juxtapose as a pre-dinner drink or when cooking up dinner.
LEARN SOMETHING
Throughout the year, we answered commonly asked questions about beer. What's Cryo? Is Helles a place or a lager? We had a lot of fun answering these questions and thought we'd round up a few for you to enjoy.
🪵 What is a Foeder?
You can think of it as one very large wooden barrel. When brewers age beers in barrels, they can choose different sized barrels which can have an impact on the final flavour.
For example, if you put beer in a very small oak barrel, a greater share of the beer would have contact with the wood, and you would get a significantly more "woody" tasting beer than you would in a larger barrel. A foeder, because of its size, allows for a lower ratio of the beer to make contact with the wood, which results in a much more nuanced oak character.
If you've never seen one before, they are beautiful and impressive.
🌾 What is a White IPA?
White IPA is actually a hybrid of two styles and the name gives us a clue as to what we should expect:
White, or “wit,” as in Belgian Wit, tells us to expect the refreshing and spicy characteristics of that famous wheat ale.
IPA, as in American IPA, tells us to expect a highly hopped character.
As with so many new IPA styles that have emerged in the last decade, White IPA was originally invented in the US, apparently born of a collaboration between Deschutes Brewery in Oregon, and the Belgian-born brewmaster at Boulevard Brewing.
Did you know? In beer years, White IPA is a new style, having been first brewed in 2010.
Food pairings: White IPA loves to be paired with cheese, fish and chicken.
🥶 What is a Cold IPA?
As the name suggests, a Cold IPA is an IPA that has been fermented at a lower temperature than what an IPA would normally ferment at. To make this work, brewers usually rely on a lager yeast instead of an ale yeast to get a clean fermentation profile.
By changing the yeast strain and the fermentation temperature, you end up with an IPA that is super crispy and crushable like a lager, with some of the stronger hop flavours you’d expect from an IPA. Really, it’s the perfect summer beer.
Did you know? Cold IPA is a relatively new style, invented by Wayfinder in Portland. The Beer Loop recently enjoyed the original Cold IPA and loved it.
Listen to this podcast from Craft Beer and Brewing, which goes deep with Kevin Davey of Wayfinder on what it takes to make this beer.
Where to get one? Container Brewing’s Frostbite, Phillips’ Revenge and Fernie’s Vantage are all examples of Cold IPAs you can get in BC.
❄️ What are Cryo Hops?
With so many new beers featuring Cryo Hops, you might be wondering what all the hype is about. The hype, as with recent beer trends, is all about hop oil called lupulin. When brewers add hops to a beer, they are doing so to extract the flavour compounds that reside in lupulin.
The problem with typical hop pellets is that they are 90 percent green matter and only 10 percent lupulin oil. If lupulin is what we’re really after, this is a highly inefficient ratio. So hop producers have been improving this ratio in recent years.
These lupulin-enriched hop pellets are processed using a cryogenic processing technology resulting in significantly higher lupulin levels. This low-temperature methods gives allows brewers to male highly aromatic beers, especially those juicy IPAs that so many of us love.
Did you know? Cryo Hop is the registered trademark of Yakima Chief Hops (YCH). They even have a stand-alone building to process this brand. Other hop producers offer lupulin-enriched hops under different brands.
Explore this topic further with this primer from Hop Culture.
BC Beers made with Cyro Hops: This week’s DIPA release from Superfluxfeatures Cyro Hops. Superflux also has a new Phantasm Cyro IPA that it released last week, in collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops.
👃 Phenols
If you've ever heard beer geeks talk about saison styles, you may overhear them talking about phenols. What are they, and do we want them in our beer? Short answer: it depends.
When a beer is phenolic, it is often described as clove-like, medicinal, or even, "band-aid." Depending on the beer style, that could be a good thing (the clove flavours, not the band-aid flavours!) or a bad thing. In most beers, the strong presence of polyphenols is considered an off-flavour. But, in farmhouse-style beers it's considered an essential characteristic, especially in wheat beer, table beer, abbey-style single, dubbed, triple, quad, and Belgian-style blondes.
Occasionally when we describe a farmhouse beer at Beer Loop, we'll talk about "phenolic" notes. When you see that, you know we're talking about clove, bubblegum, pepper, banana, spicy and even smoky notes. Most often, it's a good thing, appropriate for the style.
🍻 What is a lagered ale?
What's the difference between ale and lager? Quite simply, the type of yeast and that yeast's preferred fermentation temperature. Ales are made from top-fermenting yeasts that like to ferment at warmer temperatures (18-24ºC on average, but can go as high as 35ºC with certain yeasts). Lagers are bottom-fermenting yeasts that like to ferment at colder temperatures (6-12ºC).
What is lagering? Fermentation can take longer at colder temperatures, so lager beer was traditionally lagered, meaning, stored in cold cellars to let the yeast do its thing. To lager a beer is to store it cold for an extended period of time before packaging it.
A lagered ale, therefore...is an ale that has been lagered. In other words, using an ale yeast, fermented cooler, and lagered at cool temperatures for six to eight weeks minimum, to bring out a beautifully clear beer.
😝 How is beer soured?
What makes a sour different? It's all in the bacteria. When a brewer is making beer they typically want to inoculate it with yeast and hope the yeast will pick up fermentation before any other bacteria beat it to the punch. But with a sour, they deliberately add bacteria to help the beer turn sour. The bacterias of choice?
The first is lactobacillus - yes the same bacteria that makes yogurt taste slightly sour.
The second is pediococcus, a bacteria in the same family of lactobacillus that can also create diacetyl, a compound that has a buttery taste.
The third is a domesticated wild yeast, brettanomyces, which doesn't sour the beer but adds layers of funky notes like kay, barnyard, and earthiness, among others.
🌌 What are Galaxy Hops?
You may have noticed that rarely a week goes by without a new beer release showcasing the use of Galaxy hops, usually as a dry-hopped ingredient. Why is this hop variety so popular?
It's flavour profile has something to do with it, lending bright citrus, peach, and passionfruit to any beer it touches, especially when dry-hopped. If you love those flavours, you'll want to drink the beer fresh, as these flavours tend to mellow out as the beer ages. So don't put these beers in the cellar—enjoy them as fresh as you can.
Did you know? Galaxy hops are (in brewing years) very new, having first enjoyed commercial production in 2009 and first becoming popular in Australia. In 2021, Galaxy hops accounted for 60 percent of hop production from Australia.
⛏️ What's a Grisette?
As you can guess from the name, this beer style originates from the mining regions along the French/Belgium border. In taste and approach, it is similar to other farmhouse ales like saisons and bières de garde.
Fans of this style love its golden colour, delicate Belgium-style flavours, light flavours, dry finish, and low alcohol content. You can typically expect a light body and fruity aroma from these beers; it was designed to be a thirst-quenching beer for Belgian miners.
What's in the name? Gris means gray in French, and could be a reference to the colour of the stone the miners in the region mined.
🌉 West Coast vs ⛵East Coast IPA
When the craft beer scene in North America had its supersonic boom, it was on the back of very hoppy interpretations of pale ales. Pioneers like Sierra Nevada and Anchor Brewing awakened our palates to bold hopping rates and unleashed a hop revolution. As these intense hopping rates were complemented by new experimental hop varieties, the West Coast IPA was born.
This was a brash, loud, and intense style originally known for its strong caramel malt backbone, clear body, and eye-popping bitterness. When West Coast IPAs dominated, so too did those classic floral, pine, and grapefruit flavours. Eventually, brewers started taking it to extremes in what felt like an IBU arms race to see who make the most bitter version of the style. Many failed.
Many more, decided to experiment in a different direction.
Rather than add the hops during the boil (which unleashes a hops battering compounds), brewers on the East Coast began to toss most of their hops during, or after fermentation finished. Beer is much colder when being fermented, and the result brought out a whole new flavour profile from hops. These are the juicy tropical and stone fruit notes that you'll find in most version of the style.
Adding hops during fermentation instead of during the boil significantly reduces the hops' bittering effect, which is why you often end up with a sweeter beer compared to the West Coast style.
Hops at this stage also add haze to the beer, contributing to that juicy milkshake look so many people love. But there's something else that makes East Coast IPAs different: the grain bill. Most add oats to the recipe to give the body an extra soft, creamy, pillowy feel. Combine these two significant changes from the original style, and you end up with a hazy, juicy, tropical beer. A style that continues to be all the rage, almost a decade after it was first invented.
🍊 Thiols — the next big thing
Thiols are highly aroma-active compounds that can give very intense fruity flavour to predominantly dry-hopped beers. Thiols were only discovered in recent years, and for a short while, we assumed they were derived exclusively from hops. However, yeast labs like Canada's own Escarpment Labs have recently released yeast strains that unleash these flavour compounds.
Why are they all the rage? Thiol compounds smell like Sauvignon Blanc wine, gooseberry, guava, grapefruit, and passionfruit — flavours that beer lovers can't get enough of right now.
🏰 What's a Helles Lager?
You might have noticed in the last year that more and more breweries are showcasing this style in their taprooms. I'm personally delighted to see this trend because I think a Helles is a beautiful thing.
Helles means "pale in colour" and is the maltier, rounder, softer cousin to Pilsner. The best versions of the style feature bread or biscuit notes and enough hop spiciness to balance the beer. In other words, a more nuanced, slightly sweeter Pilsner.
Its nuanced canvass also makes it a great pairing for so many different types of food. Want an appropriate beer to of with that salad, fresh shellfish, or even spicy dishes? Give Helles a try.
EXPLORE A STYLE
Every month, we'll be bringing you a deep-dive on a beer style. We launched this series in October, and it has proven to be our most-read series. Our first two style explorers went deep on Czech Pilsner and American Pale Ale. Here's the sensory experience on each:
🇨🇿 Czech Pilsner
A Czech Pilsner, done well, is a beautiful beer. It is rich in light malt and floral hop character, with a long, rounded finish. It is incredibly refreshing while also pleasing the taste buds with a balanced complexity that keeps things interesting. This isn't a lite lager; this is a Pilsner that isn't afraid to show off its malt backbone.
The sensory experience
Appearance: A Czech Pilsner will pour a gold to deep gold colour with brilliant clarity, and a dense, long-lasting head. In fact, don't be shocked if it comes to your table with a really thick head—that's an authentic way to enjoy the beer.
Aroma: You should pick up light malt flavours reminiscent of bread or crackers, combined with spicy or floral hop aromas. The combination might even smell grassy. While not always the case, for the most part, you should expect a balance between the malt and hop aromas. You might even notice the combination evolve with every sniff.
Flavour: What you pick up in the aroma is what you'll find in the flavours: rich, complex, bready maltiness combined with a soft and round bitterness that gets elevated by the floral or spicy hop flavour. Sometimes the malt flavours give off a sweet impression, verging on light caramel. You should expect bitterness, but not in the harsh way you would expect from a style that has been hopped aggressively. This beer is clean and smooth with a restrained fermentation character.
Mouthfeel: The carbonation should be low to moderate, with a medium body.
🌟 American Pale Ale
If there is a source of truth on what the perfect American pale ale looks and tastes like, turn to Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale. It's not always easy to find in BC, but if you travel across the border or keep an eye out for it, it's not impossible to get your hands on. It's worth the effort—it remains a classic beer long after it kicked off the craft beer revolution. You can also sense check for the style by using this beer as your default taste profile for the style.
The sensory experience
Appearance: An American Pale Ale should pour a pale golden to light amber colour, and is generally very clear, although it's perfectly fine for dry-hopped versions to have some haze. It is not, however, a hazy style.
Aroma: Hops shine in this style from the moment you put your nose to the glass. You should get moderate or strong hop aroma from American or New World hop varieties. It's these varieties that bring so much citrus, pine, floral, resin, and tropical fruit aromas and flavours to the style. Regardless of what you pick up, or what the brewer intended, hops should be very apparent in the aroma. A traditional version of the style may also have slight malt aromas of caramel, biscuit, and bread.
Flavour: Everything you pick up in the nose will carry over to the flavours. Those New World hops will delight you with a range of possible flavours like citrus, pine, floral, resin, spice, tropical fruit, stone fruit, berry, and melon. If the brewer is leaning into an old-school version of this style, you'll also get small amounts of bread, toast, and biscuit which may present as light caramel, in a restrained way. Either way, the malt flavours support the hops, yielding a nice bitterness and a medium to dry finish.
Mouthfeel: The carbonation should be moderate to high, with a medium body that feels smooth. No harshness, and no astringency.
UPCOMING EVENTS
🎤 Container Brewing is hosting a comedy night tonight. $12 tickets, with proceeds going to the Greater Food Bank.
🧶 Deep Cove invites you to wear your best ugly Christmas sweater for a party on December 22. Music, Santa, mulled wine, and festive activities.
🧑🎄 Gladstone is hosting a "Tibs Eve" ugly Christmas sweater party on December 23.
📽️ Fuggles is screening Star Wars in the tap room on December 23.
🧘 Patina Brewing is hosting a mindful beer tasting yoga class monthly on Saturdays. The next sessions are on December 17, January 28, February 18, and March 11. Container Brewing is also offering Beer Yoga sessions on January 15 and February 25.
🎆 Patina Brewing is putting on a New Year's Eve Party. You're encouraged to book a spot in advance. $10 per person. Beacon Brewing is also putting on a NYE party with live music and food trucks on standby.
🍽️ Persephone is hosting a 4-course dinner to ring in the new year. Call the tasting room to reserve your spot. (778) 462-3007 (ext 2). Menu.
BEER QUESTIONS
Got a question about beer? Let us know and it could be answered in the next newsletter.