A respectable crawl

Here’s how my first hours of every trip to Vancouver go down. Drop my bags at the hotel. Go to my favourite taco place (La Taqueria Pinche… best tacos I’ve had outside of Mexico or San Diego). Make a beeline to one of the ever growing list of solid craft brewery taprooms. Enjoy that one, then head to the next taproom that is always less than three blocks away. Vancouver visits always get off on the right foot. In fact, this is a pattern that can repeat every day of a Vancouver trip. On my most recent trip to one of my favourite cities in the world, I designed a respectable four day craft beer crawl.

With a belly full of tacos I hopped a bus to East Van a couple hours after touching down in Vancouver and settled into the beautiful taproom at Andina Brewing Company. This is a really unique place with most of the beers made with obvious influences from South America. After being stuck in the depths of winter in Saskatoon, sitting in the sun coming through a window felt downright summery, even in February.

Andina Brewing Company

These beers were all thirst quenching, with the Lulo Sour my favourite. I also loved that cassava chips came with the tasting flight. Solid start to my Vancouver tastings in a beautiful setting.

Tasting room at Andina Brewing Company

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Craft beer vacation day

The first half of my September vacation day in Vancouver was spent on Grouse Mountain taking in spectacular views on a simply perfect fall day. Being 4,000 feet above the city breathing in fresh mountain air allowed me to work up quite the thirst for my afternoon pursuit – a craft beer crawl through East Vancouver. First stop was Parallel 49 Brewing, oddly, a brewery whose beers I hadn’t tried before even though a number of their offerings are available in Saskatoon.

I was really happy with my selection of this as the first stop (as my palette was at its freshest) and of the samples I selected for my tasting here. These beers were all outstanding. From left to right: Holy Smokes (a smoked lager), Schadenfreude (probably the best pumpkin beer I’ve ever had with a full pumpkin and spice flavour), Summer Smash (an ISA that if it were available in bottles would be my watching a baseball game game beer) and their Filthy Dirty IPA. What a great start to a craft beer crawl!

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