What: Victoria Beer Week
Where: Various venues, including Victoria Public Market; Swans Brewery, Pub and Hotel; and Spinnakers Gastro Brewpub, among others
When: March 6 through March 14
Tickets: $15-$50 through Ticket Rocket (1050 Meares St.), by phone at 250-590-6291, or go to vicbeerweek.ticketrocket.co
Beer enthusiasts eager to test their malty mettle will have plenty of opportunities at Victoria Beer Week, which is staging 19 events featuring 50 breweries over the next nine days.
The seventh annual festival was once a modest event, but has grown alongside the craft beer revolution into a massive undertaking nowadays, according to Ryan Malcolm, the Victoria Beer Society’s executive director. “It’s really grown in a way I never saw coming. When I started working in craft beer, which was 2012, there were 56 B.C. breweries. There’s now over 160.”
The festival succeeds with a big buy-in from the local community; retailers, suppliers, and restaurants are on-board in large numbers this year, and several events being offered have sold out in advance. The society clearly knows its market: Its other annual event, the Great Canadian Beer Festival, is the longest-running event of its kind in Canada, and celebrated its 27th edition last year with 99 breweries from across Canada participating.
“Victoria Beer Week’s reason for being is to celebrate the craft beer community that already exists here, to foster it and to make it grow further,” Nicholson said. “It’s their passion, we’re just celebrating it.”
The week opens Friday with a showcase at the Victoria Public Market featuring 16 newly released beers. Before the festival closes on March 14, beer fans will have taken in everything from a class (Beer + Coffee, March 12 at Discovery Coffee Roastery) exploring the union between two of the world’s most consumed beverages to one covering ancient ales (Party Like It’s 999, March 14 at the Argyle Attic). Education is a huge part of what is being offered, and Malcolm (who is teaching classes in addition to organizing) says the festival will do what it can to turn craft beer drinkers into craft beer ambassadors via five Beer School classes during the event.
“We’re really trying to take people who have always enjoyed a Blue Buck and expand on that. Beer School doesn’t pay the bills, but it has always been a passion and a mandate for us to grow and educate the Victoria beer consumer.”
According to Malcolm, Victoria’s place in the annals of beer history is secure — if not somewhat sordid.
“During the Prohibition era, there was one brewery to every 300 man, woman and child,” he said. “That beer was mainly going to the U.S., but it was all being produced here.”
And we still compete, punching well above our weight, he said.
“Going all the way back to 1984 and Spinnakers [Brewpub], Victoria has always been on the leading edge of craft beer in Canada. That still continues.”
