Today we kicked it old school, first visiting the venerable Vancouver institution that is Storm Brewing, before hitting up two of the new nano breweries in East Van. If you are in the area, you can walk between all three. Visiting Storm Brewing is like watching Igor meet Dr. Frankenstein for the first time: This…
Category: Beer around the World
Not Kosher for Passover: What’s Brewing in Israel
This is not the first time I’ve ironically written about beer during Passover. This Passover, I would like to respond to this blog post published about beer in Israel. The author of this post had chosen to visit a culturally diverse cross-section of breweries, but only covers three of them, and therefore does not scratch the surface of…
Vancouver’s New Micro, Nano, and Pico Breweries Part III: 33 Acres
For Part 3 of our series on Vancouver’s new breweries, we will visit on of my favorites, 33 Acres. 33 Acres seems oddly situated on a mixed-use and mainly residential, block. While they might not get the kind of walk-in traffic they might if they were located on Main Street, 33 Acres already has a loyal following…
Vancouver’s New Micro, Nano, and Pico Breweries Part II: Green Leaf
Fancy a ride on the SeaBus? So do we. But where will we drink? For many years, Lonsdale was a beer desert. You would get off at the SeaBus terminal thirsty with no place to go. Now, your Sea Bus journey can terminate with a tasty tipple at the shiny new Green Leaf Brewing Co….
Downward Facing Brewdog
The BrewDog TV show, which is not all that bad actually, has an episode in which yogis at a donut shop are sipping beer in Adho Mukha Svanasana (that’s downward-facing dog for you ignorant punks!). Now we can call it “downward facing BrewDog.” It caught the eye of blogger Niche of TastingNiche and reminded me that I have…
Vancouver’s New Micro, Nano, and Pico Breweries Part I: Brassneck
In the ±2 years since I was last here, BC law changed in favor of beer. A score of new micro, nano, and pico breweries have opened in Vancouver unleashing a wave of creativity in the market. Brassneck is one of the best.It’s on 5th and Main, and the staff is surprisingly warm and friendly,…
An Evil Twin in Aberdeen
With a few days to spare prior to our September 5 departure from Scotland, we squeezed in Aberdeen. It’s Scotland’s third-largest city and home to its most famous and successful modern brewery: Brewdog. Fellow Ratebeerian and gypsy brewer Evil Twin (Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø) happened to be at Brew Dog. The busy twin brother of Mikkeller hosted…
Beerfest Asia Puts the Pour in Singapore
Singapore is a hard city to pin down. The best way to describe it to my Florida friends is Boca meets Hong Kong–an artificial, soulless, new, manufactured, wealthy, consumer-driven zone, yet one that does not totally lack the character and culture of Asia. It’s got green space, public transport, and street food but an Epcot…
Our First Malaysian Road Trip!
We just got back from a 4d/3n road trip–our first ever in Malaysia. Renting a car was easy and about the same price as in Europe, but a little more than in North America. The total price including the rental of a GPS came to about $45–50 per day. We got a local car called…
Between Bayernhaus and Brussels Cafe, We’ve Got KL Covered
It doesn’t take us much beer to get happy these days. Give us an $8 Hoegaarden and a $10 Hacker-Pschorr Animator and consider us tickled. Finding tasty alcoholic beverages in any Muslim country can be a real challenge. But thankfully, KL has a vibrant blogging community. One of the local blogs happens to be devoted…
Buses and Beers in Vietnam
The Mai Linh Express bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh lasts about 7 hours including the border crossing. That’s about 2 hours longer than they claim but it was a smooth ride. Our bus was peopled with other peculiar passengers including a couple traveling on Cuban passports, and a Vietnamese-Australian family. Cambodian customs and immigration…
The Buttenheim Kerwabaum
Where there is a Bavarian beer festival there are also remnants of the Germanic pagan traditions. Today in Buttenheim we witnessed one of these old tribal traditions at the St. Georgenbräu brewery in Buttenheim. St. Georgenbräu also happens to be one of our favorite breweries in the area. This is why: Fashion historians might also…
Love and Barley 