The Yukon Beer Festival is returning for its fifth year on October 13 and 14, with proceeds benefitting the Boys and Girls Club of Whitehorse. Local beer aficionados will be able to taste beer from more than a dozen brewers and distributors travelling to the festival from across Canada, as well as local Yukon brewers like Winterlong and Yukon Brewing.
There will likely be more than a hundred beers featured at the festival, from 30+ breweries. This year’s selection includes beers from Quebec, Ontario, the United States and Denmark.
Cider tables will be returning again this year, with some fan favourites, including Sea Cider and Tieton, and some new ones from Central City, Left Field Cider Co., Uncommon Cider Co., and Bulwark Traditional Craft Cider.
While the best bet for gluten-free imbibing is check out the cider selection, which will feature some new ciders, including Central City Hopping Mad Cider, Scenic Road Nearly Dry Cider and Uncommon Apple Haskap Cider, there will also be a few gluten free beer options from Brunehaut and Groundbreaker.
The Festival will be offering connoisseur packages again this year, which includes a regular ticket to the festival, a connoisseur tasting glass and 8 beer tokens, as well as access to a VIP tasting with a limited number of attendees that takes place an hour before the doors open to the general public.
Luke Legault from the Wandering Bison is doing the catering, serving locally sourced snacks, including pulled pork sandwiches, wedge fry poutine and smoked chicken chili. Vegan options will be also be available.
The Yukon Beer Festival is offering a fairly broad range of styles of beer, from pilsners to imperial stouts, Belgians, saisons and the latest style favourite: sours.
This year, there will be smaller quantities of all the beers, which means you will need to find the ones you are interested in and try those first. The team behind the festival are trying to have a list of beers available for perusing in the days before the event.
The selection of beers has expanded to include Collective Arts (Ontario), Charlevoix (Quebec), Bilboquet (Quebec), Powell Street (B.C.), and Modern Times (U.S.), plus many others.
Brewers that haven’t been here before are also coming to the festival this year, such as Category 12 and Persephone, both from B.C.
This year’s festival is being organized by a combination of Yukon Beer Festival veterans as well as a few fresh faces.
The Yukon Beer Festival relies heavily on volunteers to help pull off the event.
They tend to have 40 volunteers pouring beer, five helping at the front taking tickets, and a few replenishing water and keeping tables stocked inside the tasting room.
“People are really generous with their time and we haven’t had any issues finding volunteers,” said society president Kaori Torigai.
Each volunteer is offered a ticket for half price on the night they are not helping out at the event.
The event is capped at 500 people each night, so if you’ve got your heart set on attending this year don’t delay getting your ticket.
Make sure you’ve got a designated driver or the number of a taxi company before you start imbibing.
Here are the details for this year’s event:
The Yukon Beer Festival takes place Friday, Oct.13 and Saturday, Oct. 14 at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre.
Connoisseur Tasting Package– advance admission from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. for VIP tasting access– access to regular tasting event from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.– Yukon Beer Festival tasting glass– 8 beer tokens
Regular Tasting Ticket– access to regular tasting event from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.– Yukon Beer Festival tasting glass– 5 beer tokens
For more information go to www.YukonBeerFestival.com or contact [email protected].
