For Clay Potter, this year’s Great Canadian Beer Festival is a coming home and a coming out.
Potter, brewmaster at Moon Under Water Brew Pub, returned home to Victoria last year — after spending years studying brewing and distilling in Scotland, England and Germany — to open the brew pub at 350B Bay St., with his parents and fiancée Chelsea Walker.
This will be a chance to debut four of his beers from the Moon microbrewery at a festival that 28-year-old Potter has been attending since he was old enough to legally drink.
“But this will be the first beerfest I will be pouring our own beer at,” Potter said. “And it will be a perfect opportunity to reach out to thousands of beer drinkers.”
The 21st annual Great Canadian Beer Festival kicks off Friday at Royal Athletic Park with 59 exhibitors bringing about 200 beers, ales and at least one cider, from the Merridale cidery in Cobble Hill.
Gerry Hieter, a brewmaster and chairman of the Great Canadian Beer Festival Society, said about 8,500 people will sample the featured brews, all from craft breweries from Vancouver Island and the rest of B.C., plus Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Yukon, Ontario, Quebec, Washington, Oregon, California and Colorado.
All tickets, as usual, were snapped up early with each ticket good for one day.
Breweries will be bringing beers and ales brewed to be on the interesting side of the taste palate — rather than catering to the mass market.
Hieter said he had nothing against the big corporate brewers. He even knows people who work for them.
“They are nice people,” he said. “They just don’t make a product that is of interest to us.”
A new twist for this year’s festival includes the introduction of gluten-free beers, for those with intestinal issues such as celiac disease.
The Great Canadian Beer Festival runs Friday from 3 to 8 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 6 p.m.
For more information go to gcbf.com
