What: Great Canadian Beer Festival
Where: Royal Athletic Park (1014 Caledonia Ave.)
When: Friday, Sept. 6, (4 p.m.–9 p.m.) and Saturday, Sept. 7, (12 p.m.–5 p.m.)
Tickets: $45 (daily) or $78 (weekend pass) from ticketrocket.co
Website: gcbf.com
A new team of owner-organizers running the Great Canadian Beer Festival is expanding upon previous editions of the two-day festival with a series of key adjustments, from a record-setting beer lineup to a much-needed capacity increase.
What will not change is a focus on showcasing the best beer the country has to offer. “We’re not doing any American beer, or anything out of the country,” said Chris Nohr, one of three new owner-directors at the helm of the festival. “We have a global palette here. There’s lot of great beer from all over the world, but you don’t need to reach out past Canada. We have so much here to explore for different tastes.”
The 27th edition of the two-day event, which is set for Royal Athletic Park on Friday and Saturday, will mark the beginning of new chapter in the history of Canada’s longest-running annual beer festival. An ownership team led by Nohr, Ryan Malcolm and Glen Stusek has taken over the reins of the event from Gerry Hieter, who founded the festival with John Rowling in 1993. Hieter retired in October, and reached out to the beer enthusiasts behind Victoria Beer Week to see if they would be interested in taking over the event. Nohr, Malcolm and Glen Stusek gladly signed on.
It was a serendipitous turn of events, according to Nohr. “Off the sides of our desks as a hobby, a group of us got together in 2014 to start Victoria Beer Week. This year, we were having our self-revaluation, trying to decide if we wanted to continue to grow, because we’d hit the limit of what we could do in a week. We decided to double-down and reinvest, and expanded our offerings in the season, and in the process Gerry called us up and said he was ready to retire.”
The newly named Victoria Beer Society will continue to operate both the GCBF and Victoria Beer Week, going forward. Much like the expanded Victoria Beer Week — which staged 21 events over a nine-day period in March, followed by a pop-up beer garden series in Centennial Square through July and August — beer fans can expect bigger things from the GCBF going forward.
“We’re going to dig in our heels and focus on optimizing the quality of the experience,” Nohr said. “This year we’ve got debit machines and credit machines and an increased capacity, and more availability of offerings. Next year, we have three or four other ideas we didn’t feel quite ready to put on the table, as we wanted to see how this year played out. But I can see the number [of beers] increasing yet again, with the potential to expand the number of days.
“Who knows? It is about expanding the experience, and increasing the quality of the experience.”
The GCBF is the second-largest of its kind in the province, behind the Vancouver Craft Beer Week Festival at the PNE Fairgrounds. But the gap is narrowing in a big way. A record 99 breweries — up from 64 last year — are providing 300 different beers at this year’s GCBF. While many beer festivals in Canada (including previous editions of the GCBF) have welcomed contributions from U.S. breweries, the new ownership group wanted to focus on Canada’s fast-growing community of craft breweries. A new partnership with the Canadian Craft Brewers Guild helped bring beers from across the country to Victoria this weekend, including 25 breweries from Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and Yukon. The remainder are from Vancouver Island and other areas of B.C.
This decision reflects the fast-developing tastes of beer enthusiasts, according to Joe Wiebe, the festival’s beer director and the author of Craft Beer Revolution: The Insider’s Guide to B.C. Breweries. “The craft beer revolution is all about variety. Consumers are really excited about trying something new and different. That has changed from the old mentality where you had your favourite beer and you drank lots of it. Now, it’s more of a tasting culture. What we are trying to do with the beer at GCBF is to really reflect that, and bring in a wide variety.”
Wiebe said he worked through the spring in order to get as much beer from across Canada as we could. “We don’t quite have every province, but we do have every region covered.” Those breweries will be separated on-site into regional pavilions, another key change put in place by the new ownership group. Beer tokens can be purchased at the festival for $2 each, and admission includes a tasting glass and program.
The festival has been given a 1,000-person capacity increase, but they are hoping for similar numbers (4,500 daily) as last year; Nohr said the management team didn’t want to change too much, or grow too big, in its first year. Supporters of the festival can expect expanded programming for the 2020 edition of the GCBF, he said. “This year is about learning the operations, but we couldn’t help but make a few tweaks.”
Nohr has a three-year plan is to make the GCBF Canada’s best beer festival, “which I think we have a real strong shot of doing. There is a real history of craft beer in Victoria, and we have a lot of community support.”
Wiebe agreed. “I call us the craft beer capital. It’s an amazing spot. It’s where it all started in 1984 with [Canada’s first brewpub] Spinnakers, which is an institution here. We have a great variety of breweries and a great brewpub culture highlighted by Phillips Brewing, which is the most successful craft brewery in Canada. We stack up really well. Per capita, I couldn’t tell you for sure, but we have one of the densest conglomeration of breweries in Canada. It’s amazing.”
