Time to Celebrate: Birch Syrup Season is Done
Shift from birch sap for syrup, to sap for beer. “Oh yeah, beer concentrate is fun and easy, relative to syrup, and the vibe is all beer,”
beer
Chill, it’s summer
Yukon-brewed beers for the season from Yukon Brewing, Winterlong Brewery, and Woodcutter’s Blanket.
Support local with a beer and some Indian food
Things are different for everyone in the new COVID-19 world and companies everywhere are having to change their business models to adapt. Nowhere is this truer than for the Woodcutter’s Blanket. “It’s been difficult, it felt like it happened overnight,” said co-owner James Maltby. “It has forced us to do a 180 on our business …
A long time ago, in a lake far away
I was 12 years old in 1955 when my oldest brother, Robin, went away to university. As siblings in a close-knit family, we had shared many delightful (and less-than) hours around the dinner table. But the six-year difference in our ages meant we weren’t bosom pals. In May of 1961—the year stubby beer bottles came …
Modernizing a photographic landmark on Second Avenue
A few weeks ago, Woodcutter’s Blanket launched the latest in its expansion efforts—a microbrewery. The bar plans to offer a rotating assortment of beers which will go straight from the kegs to your glass, making the beer “as fresh as you can get it” according to Woodcutter’s co-owner, James Maltby. This has the added benefit …
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Raise your glass
Since launching Yukon Brewing, Alan Hansen and Bob Baxter have proven that they know their beer. With the success of Two Brewers whisky over the past few years, they’ve demonstrated to the Canadian marketplace that they know their liquor as well. Their efforts garnered a gold medal and “Best Single Malt of the Year” at …
Skagway Brewing Company expands
Whether you’re visiting Skagway by boat or by highway from Whitehorse, a visit isn’t complete unless you’ve tried the local beer. Healy was born and raised in Yankton, South Dakota and first visited Skagway in 1999. “So a buddy and I decided to go on a roadtrip to the East Coast. At the last minute, …
It’s a cultured Canada Day in Mayo
The Mayo Arts Festival and Canada Day celebrations are highlights. Everybody is looking forward to the celebrations. 2018
Skagwegian Camping 101
Our American neighbours do things a little differently… I have not made the trip to mainland Alaska yet, but my experience of those oddballs and genuinely interesting characters that live in the tiny village of Skagway truly are one of a kind. Hiking and camping are certainly a great way to get out and explore …
A new craft beer in town
There’s a new brewery opening in the Mount Sima area. Deep Dark Wood Brewing is hoping to be open and available to the public around Christmas.
Whip ‘em out and measure!
On Saturday, November 18, all Yukon Fish and Game members are welcome to bring their antlers, horns and skulls to be measured and scored by certified Boone and Crockett scorers.
Yukon’s version of Oktoberfest
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 …
Happy Beer-day to You!
If you’re feeling dapper this weekend, you’ve got an opportunity to dust off your best prohibition era outfits and celebrate the Yukon Brewery’s 20th Anniversary. The brewery is throwing a shindig to celebrate, offering the public 20 per cent off stock in their retail store (off everything but the booze. Bummer, I know). There will …
A Pioneering Memoir to Keep the Brew True
“This is how you want to talk about your beers — with pride and a bit of humour too — and to do that, you have to produce beers that you’re proud of.” –Excerpt from Brewing Revolution by Frank Appleton It’s not too soon to say: Canadian craft beer has wrenched the baton of good …
Something different is always brewing
Winterlong Brewing Co. is absolutely, positively, not a mass production brewery — in spite of market forces. The owners, Marko and Meghan Marjanovic, call market research “playing around.” They call complications “the fun part” and frustrations are “challenges.” And, when they have finished playing around and overcoming the frustrating fun parts, yet another beer is …
For the love of beer
Kaori Torigai loves beer in much the same way others love baseball. Or World of Warcraft. Like baseball, there are a mind-boggling array of statistics to consider. And, like World of Warcraft, there is a huge cast of characters. And, as in both baseball and World of Warcraft, beer is social, it can be shared …
Two Chefs, a Dinner and a Whole Lot of Beer
If you love beer and food, you’ll love this spin on the traditional Winemaker’s Dinner: Hops ‘n’ Grub. Seated at a long table with a hundred of your Whitehorse neighbours, you will dive taste buds-first into dishes created to pair with select brews. Four chefs are working together to create the meal: Troy King …
Can We Beat Alaska This Year?
“Play ball!” These words will be ringing out in Dawson City this Labour Day weekend. From Sept. 2 to 5, teams from the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Alaska will converge on two ball diamonds to compete in the Labour Day Slo-Pitch Classic Tournament. This annual, mixed tournament has been a 30-year tradition in Dawson, says …
Pritchett Rocks Country
Having a ringside seat at an Aaron Pritchett concert might just get you one of his trademark cowboy hats simply for being there. “When I get excited about having a great show, I tend to throw them out into the crowd to give them a little memento,” the country crooner says. “I’ve been through hundreds …
Summer Fun has Begun
Look around. The birds are singing, canoes and kayaks are back on Subaru roof racks and my neighbour seems to have an urge for gardening at 11:30 p.m. These are signs of summer. It’s a change from spending much of our time inside, sipping hot tea and feeding the woodstove to living the wild and …
Oh, Beer. Maybe Next Year?
It’s a gathering where you may sip the tingly bitterness of a pale ale, sample salty snacks from the “bacon booth” and lock eyes magically with your future spouse. No wonder tickets to the Haines Beer Fest have sold out faster than ever this year. The event takes place May 27 and 28, in Haines, …
An Open Letter to the Owner Of Twenty Rusted Nails
Dear Sir/Madame; It has come to my attention that you may have lost these (see photo). They were left in a fire pit sometime over the winter, which was installed in the parking lot of the Schwatka Lake Day Use Area, directly adjacent from the sign that reads “NO FIRES AT ANYTIME.” Clearly, you left …
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Hobgoblins, Skulls, and Warlocks
While the chip and candy industry churns out boxes of treats for the kids, there lies another type of treat adults can enjoy at Halloween: creepy cigars. With names like Insidious, Exorcist, and Warlock, there is a niche market of cigars with freaky name. First, the cigar called Insidious. Line this cigar up with the …
Good beer is like fine wine
“Tasting beer is a very similar process as tasting wine,” says Kaori Torigai, president of the Yukon Beer Festival Society.
Not Just Heineken
I recently re-visited Holland, the country I grew up in. I have learned over the years, in speaking to fellow ‘Dutches’, that how I experienced things in my childhood – or, for that matter, when I go back to the place I spent my childhood – these are just my experiences, not necessarily something uniquely …
Porter for Your Stout?
The year is 1720. If you just touched down in London town, you would see a bustling city with ships docked at each port. If you were a male looking for work, you might have considered the popular porter trade. With London being on the banks of the Thames River, ships would come and go …
Brewed from the Heart
The world of suds has official definitions of what constitutes a craft beer. That doesn’t prevent Marko Marjanovic from offering his own. “For myself, it’s a beer that’s brewed by passionate people who want to create a flavourful beer that’s been hand-crafted, that’s been selected based on the flavours that they want in their beer,” …
Birch Beer!
I’ve always known Uncle Berwyn’s Pure Yukon Birch Syrup was the best birch syrup in Canada. As it turns out, our homegrown syrup, produced off-grid in a homestead on the banks of the McQuesten River by Berywn Larsen and Sylvia Frisch, is actually the second-best birch syrup in the world. So say New York birch …
Hotdog Destiny
On July 4 my family headed to Skagway for the Independence Day celebration. Since I was about to write a piece for the WUY Hot Dog Issue, I thought, “What a great way to sample the Americana hot dog culture and stuff myself with delicious mystery meat.” We arrived just in time to catch the …
“Domingo! Domingo!” Baseball in Nicaragua
In his classic account of Sandinista era Nicaragua, Blood of Brothers, Richard Kinzer notes, “With the sole exception of Roman Catholicism, no institution is as deeply rooted in Nicaragua as baseball. More than simply a pastime, it has for generations been a way for Nicaraguans to define themselves and hold themselves together as a nation. …
Biking Whitehorse to Haines Junction
Welcome to the first of four articles on beginner bike touring around the Yukon. I’ll share a rundown of trips and some tips, as well as the official judgment from my quads, on which hills are the absolute worst. I’m a musician, not an athlete. “Built for pleasure, not speed,” I like to say. I …
Ryan Dorward’s Tales of Absurdity
Beer hockey is not a sport for the faint of heart. Although it substitutes much of the grace, skill, and teamwork of our nation’s icy pastime for a grittier skill set, it lacks none of the glory. To the casual observer it may seem a frantic melee, a cartoonish fray of scabby elbows and greasy …
Spice, Earth, and Barley
Welcome to the cigar lounge. Last time we were here, I paired a CAO Italia cigar with Glenfiddich scotch. Today, the cigar of choice will be a Cusano 59 in a preferido vitola, from the Dominican Republic, accompanied by a mug of Miller draft beer. Usually seasoned cigar smokers like to have coffee, whiskey, rum, …
April Ain’t Cruel
In The Debt to Pleasure John Lancaster wonders if T.S. Eliot invented the link between April and suicides, just as painter Joseph Mallord William Turner invented sunsets (Google it. I did). But, Lancaster goes on. Before talking about the glory of roast lamb in April (The Debt to Pleasure is a dark, twisted, informative read that …
Bailey’s
It may not be a bar where everybody knows your name, but they sure as heck have seen you shoveling your driveway. It’s a neighbourhood pub. Its busiest nights are between Monday and Friday as Porter Creek welcomes home its residents after a long day of work. And Bailey’s Pub and Grill may not be …
The 72 Challenge
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone. And one we intend to win.” — …
Premium Suds
2014, craft beer options were the T & M lounge or the Yukon Beer Festival. Brainchild of Andrea Pierce now Kaori Torigai will be president.
Produce Your Own Enjoyment
It’s a rainy Sunday at the end of June; Ben Harper’s Fight for your Mind is playing loudly in Devon Yacura’s kitchen. The air smells like sweet porridge. On the stove is a wide, tall stainless steel pot. It’s a fancy pot; it has a spigot on the bottom, and close to the spigot is …
The Half-Beer Reciprocation Blues
Anthropologists need not travel to New Guinea to research the subtleties of human societies; plenty of culture can be witnessed at the local saloon. Among the chivalrous traditions, the bar-set prides itself on is its refusal to let a compatriot drink alone. “Want another one, Hank?” the bartender says. Hank, casts a glance at Stu …
Can I Come Along Again?
Germany is green and clean — there’s not much garbage, and there are recycling bins everywhere. The people are friendly. Being on a train is fun and comfortable, and riding in a first class compartment is better than flying. We went to a Catholic all-boy school in Mainz for a day, which was different from …
Selling ‘cool’ … one bottle at a time
Let’s talk about beer. OK, not specifically about beer. Rather about the significant contribution a brewery like the Yukon Brewing Company can make to promote the destination it was born in. Mark Beese, the brewery’s enthusiastic sales manager who could talk beer any day any time (and does), put it this way, “Beer is what …
Tis the season to raise tally: Tourists give Yukoners a bad name
Now that the days are longer than the nights again (although sometime in January at –54 we thought that this might never happen this year) our thoughts at the brewery turn to Beer Season. We don’t think of the seasons here like “winter” and “summer”, as much as we think of “Beer Season” and “Not …
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A Beeline for the Honey Brew
During my frequent beelines to the Fat Tug IPA and other craft beers at the Whitehorse Liquor Store, my eyes catch a glimpse of the solitary bottles of Fuller’s Organic Honey Dew beer, but then they move on. I’m not against honey or Fuller’s, but I do remember trying this beer years ago and deciding …
Beer in China
I wanted to write something positive about drinking beer in China. After all, they are the world`s largest consumers of beer and a major hop-growing nation. They also have the fastest-growing beer market in the world. Their beer production doubled in the past decade to around 48-billion litres of beer per year. That’s about twenty …
Scottish Beer? Ay, Laddie.
The problem with being a great whiskey-producing nation like Scotland is that it becomes all you’re known for, Okay, there’s also bagpipes, haggis and Caber tossing. But Scottish beer? Do they even make beer in Scotland? Yes. McEwan’s Scotch Ale was the only Scottish beer I heard of growing up. It could be seen gathering …
Beer and the noble pursuit of nation-building
What does it take to make a country? Paul Martin might say gay marriage or, maybe, a fresh scandal every six or eight months. But I think Frank Zappa had it right. Of course, according to Frank, “You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline – it helps if …
Thanksgiving in Haines
My friends and I spent Thanksgiving in Haines this year. We thought we would catch some fish, drink some beers and see some bears. Only one of those panned missions out. The fish weren’t jumping, or running, or whatever fish do. We saw a few dead coho on shore, but that was it. And we …
A Sexy Fall Surprise
I usually wait until Christmas to lurk around the Whitehorse liquor store in search of sexy new beer products, but September brought a surprise: Guinness Black Lager. Guinness has been throwing some heavy coin into advertising this new product. The U.S. commercials adopt the beautiful-people-cocktail-party-scene to portray the beer as a sleek, sophisticated drinking option. …
How Pure is Your Beer?
There are the purists who believe beer should be simple. The Bavarian Purity of Law of 1516, the famous Reinheitsgebot, stated that beer could only be made with water, malt (malted barley or malted wheat) and hops. Louis Pasteur wouldn’t discover yeast for a few hundred years. Some suggest the Reinheitsgebot was just designed to …
What’s in a Name?
A Fat Tug by any other name would be just as hoppy. But the name of your beer can entice or drive your average beer drinker away. I probably wouldn’t pick up a six pack of Camel Squirt if that beer even existed, but a bottle of the Belgian beer Verboden Vrucht (Forbidden Fruit) with …
Beer and Sport
It doesn’t have to be an epic battle between the forces of good and evil. I believe beer can live in a symbiotic relationship with athletic pursuits. It’s all about balance, expectations, pacing and choosing your sport wisely. The expats in Malay had it right — drinkers with a running problem. The Hash House Harriers …
Making something illegal that used to be legal is a tricky road to manoeuvre.
Making something illegal that used to be legal is a tricky road to manoeuvre. Opium? Sure, I understand. DDT? Makes sense. But making booze illegal after being freely produced and imbibed for hundreds of years in North America — what idiot dreamed that one up? Prohibition was heavily supported by the women of Canada and …
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Beer Memories: The good, the bad and the ugly
I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic about beer lately. I don’t remember my first beer but I do remember my first six pack — not a pretty story. I was 15 and went to a house party — a handful of teenagers hanging out drinking and watching an old horror movie called Q about a …
No Judgement. Really.
I’m not going to tell you what you should drink. I don’t care if you ferment raisins with brewers yeast in a garbage pail. I’m a laissez-faire kind of person. You can drink your Bud Light Lime, your Wildcat or your Pabst Blue Ribbon. You don’t have to be sheepish. Why would I care? Most …
When Did the Chinese Start Making Beer?
In perusing past entries on the Brookston Beer Bulletin blog site, www.brookstonbeerbulletin.com (a terrific forum for learning about all things beer-related), we came across a rant authored by a site visitor with the clever pseudonym, “J”. The entry starts with J describing himself as a fan of economic theory and how he has come across …
USA Hops to the Lead
Humulus Lupulus = Hops. They aren’t involved in the fermentation of beer. They aren’t even a major component. You might have 6 kg of malt in a homebrew batch but only 30 g hops. They don’t get roasted. And they occur in virtually every commercial beer. Hops are preservatives, they have sedative properties and give …
The Beer Police are Heroes
A new initiative in the UK’s Somerset County this summer will ensure that beer drinkers are not getting hosed at their favourite watering holes. Trading Standards Officers will be making the rounds throughout the county with beer measuring devices, ensuring that all glassware is certified to hold a true, 100 per cent liquid 20 fluid …
Global Warming Affects Beer Production … OK, Now It’s Serious
Just the other day while I watching the store here at the Yukon Brewing Company, I had a customer look outside our windows while I was filling his growler and remark that maybe we have global warming wrong. I finished filling his jug and turned around to see a mid-April blizzard swirling around our parking …
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2013 Adventures at the Haines Beer Fest
We got the stern border guard at Haines customs this year. No, we’re not bringing any firearms, plants or suitcases full of money, but I do have six beer entries for the homebrew competition. “The what? The who? How big are them beers?” He didn’t get it. Nobody warned him that several hundred thirsty Canadians …
Yukoners Mastermind a Winning Homebrew
If I was a better planner, I would have made my way down to Skagway at the end of April for the annual Craft Brew Festival, but sometimes my father’s genes kick in and I end up a little scattered. Luckily, I have friends who need to geek-out over conical fermenters, brewing efficiency, yeast viability, …
Beer From a Wide-Open Space
Marketing beer is fun. When you have a product that so many people enjoy and you are told to “Go sell this!” you can have a pretty amusing and creative time. Many of the world’s larger breweries have found a useful formula when advertising their wares: Beer = Boobs + Friends + Sports Heroes. It …
Beer By Committee (this will end badly)
How would you like to start a business with 50,000 of your closest friends, pals, friends of friends, acquaintances and complete strangers? What if it only cost you $50 to start and you had a vote in what products you sell, how you market them and where? What if the business we are talking about …
Bigger is Not Always Better
Students at McGill University in Montréal will notice a big change come fall semester this year, and frosh looking to swill back Export, Canadian and Molson Dry will have to pack it from home. The Student Society of McGill University (SSMU) was looking to sign a new deal this summer with Molson, the hometown brewing …
An Evening of Delightful Beer Pairings
The number on my phone glared at me in ugly black digits: 2,020. My Fitness Pal app wasn’t being very friend-like, accusing me of eating over 2,000 calories in a single sitting. I undid the top button of my jeans and decided it was worth every bit of gut-distending discomfort. It’s not often you stumble …
Looking for a Kinder, Gentler Beer Drinker
With binge drinking and bar violence on the rise, the Province of Alberta has made some policy changes that it is hoping will curb public drunkenness. The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission has amended policy that will no longer allow for extreme “cheap drink” specials, extended happy hours and large drink orders past 1 a.m. …
Experts Are Not the Only Ones With an Opinion
We are often browsing around for new beer styles that we can make. With our growler system, we are able to try new beers without the problems of designing new packages. If you don’t know what we mean by growlers, come and see us and we’ll show you. There are a whole bunch of websites …
700,000,000,000 Bottles Of Beer On The Wall (would take 220,000 years to sing)
We feel the need to make a few comments on the $700 billion subsidy that has been the big financial news in the US last month. We have a real hard time trying to get our heads around that number, 700 billion. It sure seems like a lot of zeros. Global beer production last year …
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Beer Bottles Make Beautiful Music
The year was 1798 and the place was Helgoland. Helgoland is located in the North Sea, 70 kilometres off of the coast of Germany. This is important, since it is the remote location that made Helgoland, in 1798, the birthplace of the beer bottle organ. The church that was located on Helgoland in 1798 had …
Lots of Empty Barrels to Wear
In case you have been living in a vacuum over the past few weeks, apparently these are hard times. Funny how things seemed to turn around so fast … or maybe not so funny, depending on your perspective. We hear that beer is pretty much recession-proof. We have long argued that this is true to …
European Brewers Embrace Santa Claus
Everyone in North America knows who Saint Nicholas is, right? Obviously, he is the guy dressed in the red and white suit who gives away gifts every December 25th. However, he is also the patron saint for a number of other things. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint for bakers, boatmen, druggists, fishermen, judges, longshoremen, …
IPAs explained
I’m an unapologetic hophead, and consider no beer too hoppy to drink. I love the constricting bitterness. I love the resiny, citrusy, nostril-doping snort of a good, hop-filled American-style India Pale Ale (IPA). I wasn’t always this way. If you handed me an Ice Fog IPA 20 years ago I would have pawned it off …
Doing What Breweries Do Best
As we get nearer to our upcoming and excellent adventure, distilling, we get more and more questions about the process. So we thought we would turn the Beer Buzz into the Booze Buzz, at least for this column. We get asked the same two questions all the time. The first is, “What are you going …
Beer and Beautiful Music … Together
What goes together even better than peanut butter and chocolate, Laurel and Hardy, or ice cream and dill pickles? We think it is beer and music. We have been a long-time supporter of music in the Yukon, starting with our very first sponsorship of the Frostbite Music Festival. The brewery was three weeks old when …
What Could Be More Canadian Than Snow and Ice?
It has come to my attention that Canada is cold. Or, more to the point, people have needed to direct my attention to this fact – on numerous occasions. If I scour my generally addled brain for a distant memory of my first move to the Yukon, it’s filled with potentially dire warnings. “But – …
Closing Time … Time for Beer and Good Cheer
When I was a wage slave, the call of Friday happy-hour escapism was like aural honey to my ears. After a few years in the YTG system, I could proudly say my paper-shuffling skills were unmatchable. (I can make it look like I’m furiously working while doing nothing at all.) It also helped that no …
Berliner Weisse: The Champagne of the Spree
My colleague, Don Murphy, recently visited Germany and before he left, I sweet-talked him into bringing me back a special beer. Several weeks and 18,000 kilometres later, he appeared in my office with the booty: a squat bottle of Berliner Weisse. I had read about this beer but never tasted it. Known as the Champagne …
Wait a Second, That’s Not Beer
I like beer —anything heavier and I can easily overdo it. I just don’t have the pacing right. So when I was asked to check out the Whitehorse Fine Malt Society, I didn’t respond with my usual enthusiasm. After all, I still had some foggy residual effects from a rabid Robbie Burns scotch night a …
Talk About Those ‘Craft-y’ Beer Drinkers
The renaissance of craft brewing in Canada all started with a single beer. We are not talking about the first bottle rolled out the door by Granville Island Brewing, in 1984. Nope, we are talking about that experience enjoyed by every dedicated craft beer drinker somewhere along the road … that time “the beer” set …
Craft Brew Paradise at the T&M
Andrea Pierce is a fiery creature. She is also a beer aficionado and the new face behind the bar at the Town and Mountain Lounge in Whitehorse. Pierce is responsible for the resurgence in popularity of the sleepy watering hole. The T&M lounge now has the best beer menu in town — hands down. Pierce …
Beer Packaging
Ah, sturdy and stout stubbies. Macro beer dribbling down your chin because of the bottle’s bad ergonomic design. I remember photos from the 1970s of my uncles with mo’s, long hairs, adidas shorts and Molson Canadian in stubby form. Cut to the 1980s where stubbies were essentially a third character in the Bob and Doug …
U-Brew Basics
Not long after I met my partner I bought him a beer kit. This was in the mid-1990s, when microbreweries were starting to come into their own. I was still drinking Kokanee, but I would often pick up a six pack of Big Rock Traditional Ale as a diversion and because it was hip at …
The Mysterious Widget
Guinness is peculiar. It tastes creamy and has a fine-textured head you just don’t find in most other beers. You can chalk that up to the presence of nitrogen. Most beers just contain carbon dioxide. If you cut open a can of Guinness pub draught, you will discover a plastic orb with a pinhole opening …
Writing What’s Right About Beer
A month or so ago, the San Francisco Weekly published an article called The 10 Coolest Specialty Food and Drink Magazines. In that list are two magazines that write about beer, at least in a cursory manner. The magazine Imbibe generally has one (or sometimes two) articles about beer and finished No. 3 on the …
Winter Beer to Warm the Cockles
The weather outside is frightful but a beer could be delightful — even if it’s not the first drink that comes to mind after a brisk day in a wintery wonderland. Most people don’t crave beer after freezing their extremities. Hot chocolate with Baileys? Maybe. Hot toddy? Yes please. Most beer can’t transition from cold-and-carbonated …
‘Moving the Coat Rack’
We heard a story a while back about an artist who had a sculpture exhibit going on at a gallery. Near the entry door to the gallery, the artist placed a coat rack. During the opening, people would come into the gallery, hang their coat on the rack and move on to check out the …
Get Thee to the Brewery
I was lucky enough to “help” Rob Monk tap off a cask ale at Yukon Brewing a few weeks ago. Truth be told, there was a bit of spillage as the spigot flew from my hand, but Rob is quick on his feet and he deftly rectified the situation with minimal loss. The cask was …
Old and New Offerings Keep Brewery Dynamic
Rob Monk is head brewer at Yukon Brewing Co. in Whitehorse. He was born and raised in Whitehorse, started working at Yukon Brewing at the tender age of 19, and then moved Victoria. He worked at Spinnakers brewpub in Victoria for 10 years before being approached by Bob Baxter, president of Yukon Brewing, who asked …
Sugar and Spice and … Bacon
Most people know that beer is made from water, barley, hops and yeast. The big four. If you were to glance around the shelves of the local liquor store, you might of course notice that some styles, such as Hefeweizens, are brewed with a fifth ingredient, wheat. But that’s it, right? Just those five? Luckily, …
Yeast Wheat (But way cooler if you call it Hefeweizen)
Hefeweizens are fantastic for a number of reasons, but we would like to start off with what Rachel thinks is the most important: they are riddled with scandal and intrigue. That’s right folks. Remember when we talked about the Bavarian Purity Law maintaining that beer must be made with only hops, barley and water? Well, …
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Organic Beer: Beer Cache Gets Serious
Want to proudly face your beer bottle label forward at parties this summer? Purchasing an organic beer is one way to do just that. When it comes to the environmental impact of drinking beer, the three biggies are transportation of product and ingredients, water consumption and the production of ingredients. We will hit up the …
Not the New Kid on the Block
Nobody likes a beer snob. Even beer snobs don’t like beer snobs. So, when someone wrinkles their nose at a Bud Light and then reaches for a Chimay Rouge, it’s hard not to get your back up as they start talking about yeast strains and overtones of cinnamon and ripe apricot. To clarify immediately and …
Shootin’ the Brews: Skagway Edition
Last weekend, Beer Cache had the amazing opportunity to spend the better part of a day with Trevor Clifford, head brewer at Skagway Brewing Co., Skagway, Alaska. Spring-boarding from an established ribbon-winning homebrewer to the head brewer at a brew pub takes some ingenuity. Clifford has made the most of an incredibly small space and …
Where there’s smoke, there’s porter
Full disclosure: we really wanted to compare two smoked porters for this article, but quite frankly there is so much to say about our first contestant that we don’t have time to talk about what’s behind Door No. 2. Don’t get us wrong, we drank them both, but only one made the word limit. Before …
Monk-made Belgian Brews
I would like to write about a fabulous bar I went to in Whitehorse that served a wide selection of Belgian beer but, unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. Instead, I recently went to the Chambar Restaurant in downtown Vancouver and was greeted by one of the best beer menus in miles – all Belgian. Chambar is …
Chocolate + Porter = Genius
One of the swell new editors of WUY dropped us an email on the weekend inquiring about the status of our column, and casually mentioned that they were sipping on a Phillips Longboat Chocolate Porter at the time of writing. You know when someone mentions bacon, and all you can think about is … well, …
Cheap Beer!
Now that we have your attention . . . . Let’s pretend that you, our readers, wrote us letters. We imagine one of them would go like this: Dear Beer Cache, I’ve been reading your article for months now, and gee, it’s just wonderful! I never miss an article. What a great addition you are …
Sausage. Bier. Men in Knee-High Socks. It’s Oktoberfest!
”O’ zapft is!” cries the mayor of Munich. Translation: It’s tapped! What is tapped, where it’s tapped, and why it’s tapped is this week’s story. So dig out your lederhosen, dust off that beer stein and ready your arteries for a few links of bratwurst: it’s Oktoberfest! So … what the heck is Oktoberfest, anyway? …
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Tidings of Hops and Barley
It’s the season to eat, drink and be merry with friends and love ones. So what if we told you that you could kill two birds with one stone (the ‘eating and drinking’ bit), which would just leave you with the ‘being merry’ part? As our Christmas pressie to you, we have gift-wrapped a wonderful …
This Season, Beer Eats at the Grown-ups’ Table
This festive season, why not blow the minds of your nearest and dearest by pairing beer – not wine – with your holiday shrimp rings and Christmas desserts? That’s right. The stigma is gone. In fact, there is so much awesome literature out there on pairing beer with food that we have done some initial …
Yukon Ho! Red!
When you really, really like beer, living in a city with its very own microbrewery is a daily kind of ‘pinch me’ phenomena. So when your local brews (yet another) award winning beer … yeah. It boggles the mind. Like Gold, it is hard not to have had a pint of Yukon Red if you …
Adios, Corona.
Who isn’t familiar with the concept of the Lawnmower Beer? This is just the one beer, a cool and refreshing drink, the perfect reward for a salty upper lip and grass-stained shoes. The main purpose of this particular beer is to be thirst quenching, and as Stephen Beaumont from the Beer Connoisseur points out, the …
Craft Time
In light of the 18th Annual Great Alaska Craft Beer and Homebrew Festival, which took place in Haines, Alaska, this past weekend, we thought that we would dedicate this article to defining what exactly a makes a craft beer unique. At its most basic definition, craft beer is an American term defining a style of …
Growlers: Not Just For Pirates
Canoeing to the DCMF? You are probably already concerned about the rattling of beer bottles in your canoe (to be safely consumed, of course, by your campfire and not while out on the water). We hear your pain. If drinking from a can doesn’t float your boat (i.e., lack of a good inhale upon drinking …
Great Scot!
As you may have noticed already, Whitehorse has some new beer in town. Our friendly neighbours at Yukon Liquor Corp have sourced four offerings from Russell Brewing Company: Blood Alley Bitter, Black Death Porter, Main Street Pilsner, and Wee Angry Scotch Ale. Three of these (all but the Main Street Pils) are part of the …
Look What’s Shakin’!
Attention: New beer in town. OK, so it has been around for a few weeks, but if you haven’t yet tried Delirium Tremens on tap at Tippler’s, we suggest you hightail it over there for a liquid lunch. This fantastic Belgian strong pale ale is brewed by Belgium’s Huyghe Brewery in Melle, East Flanders. Since …
Bitter and Batter
If you read Dennis Zimmermann’s article last week on ice fishing and combined it with the weather in Whitehorse this weekend, you may well have grabbed your auger and hightailed it down to Pumphouse. Or maybe, like us, you still have a freezer full of fish from last summer’s amazing season and got inspired to …
U(wanna) Brew?
Ever thought about U-brewing? It’s just another brick in the wall of beer enjoyment, and other than the method they use for actually producing the beer (full/partial mash or beer kit), U-Brews everywhere are pretty much the same. The Whitehorse outlet, U-Brew Yukon, guarantees 44 bottles (500ml) per batch. You can purchase plastic bottles and caps …
Happy New Beer!
In case your windows are too iced up to tell, it’s winter outside. For brewers, nothing really says winter like a barleywine: it’s strong, intensely flavoured, and pairs beautifully with a wood fire, an old pair of slippers and a good book. Lord of the Rings trilogy, anyone? (She said: The Girl with the Dragon …
Haines Beerfest 2011!
Have a lovely chat with Paul Wheeler of Haines Brewing Company about the origins of the Haines Beer Fest, and you will quickly understand Alaskans’ love of craft beer. The Annual Great Alaskan Craft Beer and Homebrew Festival got its start when a liquor store manager and Paul, a homebrewer at the time, got to …
To Be a Cicerone
When I grow up I want to be a cicerone. Sigh. The above statement is true. A cicerone is the sommelier of the beer world. A lucky soul who gets to order beer for fine restaurants, recommend parings to chefs, write lengthy articles for beer connoisseur magazines and work in specialty beer stores giving wonderful …
Add Some Wit to Your Winter
One of the perks of spewing your beer brain onto a white page every couple of weeks is that people occasionally give you beer and suggest you write a column about it. One of my colleagues came back from a trip to Alaska in mid-October with a six-pack of Alaskan Wit, so I figured I’d …
Skagway Craft Brew Festival Debrief
It’s official: Skagwegians know how to have a good time. We just got back from the second annual Skagway Craft Brew Festival, and it was awesome. First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who made the festival a hit: Trisha Sims at Skagway Development Corporation, White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad, the good folk …
Beer Trivia
Delight your friends and family with a couple of beer-themed tidbits this week, or just look incredibly smart while getting your growler filled. The world’s oldest recipe? Yeah, it’s for beer. Despite popular opinion, Guinness in not a meal in a glass: It is one of the lowest calorie non-light beers, coming in at 125 …
Skagway Craft Brew Festival
If you’re 21 years of age and like to kick back in the company of more than 200 beer enthusiasts while tasting a wide variety of exceptionally crafted homebrew, we may have plans for you on April 23. Oh, and did we mention amazing food and live music? That’s right folks: it’s the second annual …
Drop that Corskcrew
You are NOT going to eat that burrito with a glass of merlot. There are just some foods that were meant to be diluted by beer, not wine. You’re sitting in a sweltering taqueria in Playa del Carmen. You order a Pacifico, not a cabernet sauvignon. Nuff said. My sister-in-law Dallas phoned one night and …
The Joy of Yeast
That Louis Pasteur was onto something. Seriously. People were harnessing the power of yeast to make beer for thousands of years before they actually knew what it was. Louis Pasteur figured out how it worked in the mid 1800s. He proved that fermentation was not just a chemical reaction but caused by an organism: yeast. …
Beer personalities
I bumped into an old Alexander Keith’s beer commercial on YouTube this week—you might remember the series. It involved a crusty Scotsman with spindly legs, patchy facial hair, and an abrasive tongue, insulting young people for spilling beer, peeling labels, or otherwise disrespecting the pride of Nova Scotia. “Alexander Keith toiled since 1820 for that …
Eight Men in a Canoe
In these dying days of summer, we often turn away from light and refreshing beers and choose to drink something with a bit more oomph. With fall in full swing, there are few more oomph-y beers available from the Whitehorse liquor store than Unibroue’s Maudite. The Name, the Legend, the Label The word maudite is …
To Gas or Not to Gas?
We here at Beer Cache have just returned from a three-week brewery tour of the great craft brew state of Alaska. We were lucky enough to stroll around bright tanks, peak into mash tuns, hang out in chilled serving fridges and pull nails from barrels to sample back-room casked ales with the generous owners and …
A Happy Accident
I can understand how they discovered wine. You squash grapes. Wild yeast on grape skins devours the sugary liquid and voila! Sociables. But how on earth did they figure out beer? You have to grow barley, dry it and then—most critically—malt it, which means you need to add water to the grains to get them …
Beer Saves
It’s empty calories, I know. If you are on a diet, beer kills—one imperial pint (20 ounces) of Yukon Red could be a tenth of your allowable intake of calories for the day. But beer also heals. If you drink bottle-conditioned beer (the stuff that is unfiltered and has the yeast sediment in the bottom), …
Tropical Beer
While most of you poor sods were busy clothing and sheltering yourselves during the month of February, I was deciding how best to hydrate myself on a sailboat off the coast of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The St. Lucia flag is blue (for the sky and sea) with nested, variably-sized triangles of yellow, black …
The Hot and Cold of It
Beer should be served cold… Or should it? The traditional rule is that ales should be served at cellar temperature (12-16 degrees C) and lagers should be served at the temperature at which they ferment (6-10 degrees C). Unlike ales, lagers go through an extra process in their development – the lagering process – where …
Beer Cocktail, Anyone?
Beer adulteration. It sounds dirty. But it’s a way to make an otherwise pedestrian beer seem wildly exotic. So-so wine can be made into sangria. So-so beer can be mixed with clamato for a great hangover remedy and an inscrutable flavour combination. However, I suspect people who drink this abomination are either caesar drinkers in …
A Beer Snob Confesses
I admit it, I’m a beerist. Not quite so harsh a thing as being a nihilist or a sexist, but I have high expectations for the beer I drink – beer snob, maybe. I recently ordered the “Mystery Can” on the beer menu at a barbecue joint in Vancouver’s Gastown. I was encouraged by the …
Great Beer, and a Star Sighting to Boot
Phew! After two columns dedicated to near beer, I’m so glad I can trade in my Holsten 0.0% for a beverage that doesn’t make me feel bloated yet empty at the same time. It’s time to start writing about real beer again. Yay! My autumn was enlightened by a beer journey to British Columbia (yes, …
Near Beer Part 2: Faux Phobia
Did you Read Part One? In my last article I slagged the North American breweries for slacking off in the non-alcoholic beer department. The non-alcoholic beers I’ve tried from this side of the pond all failed miserably in approximating beer-like satisfaction. Then again, with near-beer being such a small market, maybe I’m being too harsh. …
Near Beer: Part 1
Perhaps the most unspeakable adulteration of beer is the complete, or near-complete, removal of alcohol to make those sad, non-alcoholic shadows-of-their-former-selves near beers that men drink during sympathetic pregnancies, women drink during actual pregnancies, people drink when they have some bad genetics that make them incompatible with alcohol, or for a myriad of other reasons. …
Flavour Starts with Adam’s Ale
Why do the Irish drink stouts? Why did the pilsner style develop in the Czech region? The type of water flowing through a region was a big contributor to the type of beer that evolved in the area. Beer is generally somewhere between 90-95 percent water. In terms of sheer volume, water is going to …
Respect in a Tall Glass
If you’ve ever been to a Belgian beer bar you know that those Belgians have a different glass for every type of beer, bless their souls. It seems gimmicky, but they take their beer seriously. I was in Brussels during the Brussels Beer Weekend in the balmy month of September a few years ago. The …
Cool Tunes, Swell Suds
Dawson Music Festival (DCMF) is billed as a music event, but there happens to be a lot of beer action in the midst of it. My friend Lee, who didn’t have the foresight to purchase music tickets beforehand, kept calling it Dawson beerfest from his vantage point in the beer gardens. And arguably, beer does …
Extreme Beer
I blame my current state of beer obsession on Christmas of 1995 when I bought my partner a beer kit as a present. It somehow took hold and made beer a part of the family. We now have two converted freezers full of craft beer and kegs of homebrew. Rod (my partner) has a “Brewing …
Iron Chef Beer Pairing
I am a non-reciprocator—people invite me to their houses for fabulous meals. I eat, and weeks later I think about having them over… and then I think too much… Time keeps passing and I somehow get invited back to their place again… and the one-way valve of guest parisitism continues. I am in the happy …
Too Much Like Funkytown
If your beer tastes like cardboard, you might want to reconsider drinking it. It was probably stored in a heated room, which accelerated the oxidation process, creating that flat, wet paper flavour. If you crack a bottle of your buddy’s homebrew and have to wrap your lips around the end of the bottle to staunch …
Awash in Brew
I must be getting old: asleep in my hotel room by 10 p.m. the night of Haines Beer Fest this year. A poor display of anti-beerfest behaviour. The first year I went to the Great Alaskan Craft Beer and Home Brew Festival it was 2001 and it was held on the Fort Seward grounds. I …
Best Beer in Food
My partner likes to separate his beer and his food. I’m in favour of mixing them. One day we will find common ground. In the meantime, I will continue to feed him experimental dishes of spicy sautéed spaghetti squash doused with Big Rock’s McNally’s Irish Ale, or Smoked Porter Ancho-braised pork shoulder chops… and he …
We Have Your Beer
When I travelled to Toronto for work in March, my first impression was how I desperately needed new shoes and maybe a decent city coat not covered in lint and dust. My second impression of Toronto was that of a beer wasteland. Beer selection is controlled by the good people of the Ontario Government. You …
Hey! My lager is clear, light and fizzy!
So this week, Beer Cache is brewing a Marzen. Märzenbier is the beer style that is served at Oktoberfest in Germany. It’s usually begun in March (hence the name) and cold fermented – lagered – all summer, traditionally in ice-packed caves. But it’s not just the chilly temperatures and lengthier fermentation that makes your lager …
Beer drinkers, get your wine glasses ready
For most folk, it’ll be a crisp lager after a hot summer paddle and a full-bodied ale after a ski. So what if someone told you that you could get both … wait for it … in the SAME BOTTLE. Yeah, we know! Proudly wearing the “New Item” badge at Whitehorse Liquor Store, the beer …
Words Aren’t What They Used To Be
Do you find that words somehow start cropping up all over the place? Words that you never really ever heard before … at least not in the normal way? It seems that suddenly, for whatever reason, a word becomes the flavour of the week/month/year and everywhere you turn it has found its way into conversation, or …
