Travel Thoughts!

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Visiting Vancouver Island Brewery

When visiting Victoria, located on the southern tip of beautiful Vancouver Island, there are a variety of tourist destinations that attract visitors. Some of these attractions include the Butchart Gardens, The Royal Wax Museum, Miniature World, and BC Legislature Buildings. Victoria is also home to hand-crafted wines, beer, and ciders. Many of these locations offer tours of their facility and the one that we had an opportunity to visit was the Vancouver Island Brewery.

The tour at Vancouver Island Brewery lasted approximately a hour and a half and took place on a Saturday afternoon (November 1, 2008 to be exact). Arriving at the brewery, we were part of a large group of 30 people taking part of the tour. A most memorable part of the tour was that we got to sample the local beers in their tasting room😱!

Upon reflection of the tour, we realized that we learned a lot. For example, we learned that Vancouver Island Brewery is one of British Columbia's largest microbreweries! They were established in 1984, making them one of the oldest craft breweries still in operation on the island. Another interesting fact is that this brewery only uses the four essential ingredients to make their beers - barley, hops, yeast and water. These ingredients are what the international beer purity laws state that all beer must contain. Our tour guide went on to explain to the group that some beer companies may use up to a hundred ingredients when creating their products. These additional ingredients can increase their products' shelf life to over a year compared to Vancouver Island Brewery's beer which only has a shelf life of approximately 90 days! Imagine drinking a beer that has been in the basement for a hundred years!! YUCK 😞!! This craft brewery has made the decision based around pasteurization and choose not to do it, hence why the shelf life of their products is not as long as others.

After learning many interesting facts about the local beer brewed on site, we toured around the facilities and then ended up in the tasting room!! During our beer tasting we tried five of the local beers: Islander Lager, Westcoast Wheat, Victoria Pilsner, Piper’s Pale Ale and Hermann’s Dark Lager. The beer we enjoyed the most was the Islander Lager, it is a lighter beer and we found that it wasn't as filling as other types of beers. We thought it had a similar taste to Sleeman's, and has a sweet after taste! We were also delighted to find out that Vancouver Island Brewery's products were not only just available in their retail store; it is also available in restaurants that have won awards and pubs known for their beers around the Victoria area. However, we wish that we were able to have a more guided tasting experience.

Overall visiting the Vancouver Island Brewery was quite the exciting excursion! It is not the traditional tourism of a city that many of us are familiar with, it is an example of culinary tourism (which is rising on popularity). This tour was a fun and educational way to learn about beer. Needless to say, we also enjoyed the perks at the end of the tour! 😊 We were thrilled to have experience a taste of Victoria.

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