Competition was fierce at the 1st Annual Battle of the Bartender Beer Cocktail Competition at the Clough Club for Vancouver Craft Beer Week.

Beer-Cocktails were made by:
Shea Hogan – SilverCity VIP
Donnie Wheeler – Clough Club
Evelyn Chick – UVA
Mike Mitchelll – Heather Group
Joey Donnelly – Granville Room
David Bain – Clough Club
Julia Como – Keefer Bar
Mark Smolinski – Max’s Burgers
Tarquin Melnyk – RTL Yaletown

Find out WHO THE WINNER WAS after the jump and to check out photos from the Neighbourhood Gig at the Biltmore with Portage and Main, The Sumner Brothers, and Raleigh!!!

*drumroll*

And the winners are:
Julia Como – 1st
Mike Mitchell – 2nd
Donnie Wheeler 3rd

I got to sample Julia’s drink, it was AMAZING. Congrats!

—

Another evening of delicious beers…this time we were hosted by Biercraft on Cambie Street for the Belgian Showcase. Still lots of Vancouver Craft Beer Week happening…see you at the Battle of the Bartenders and the Neighbourhood Gig at the Biltmore tonight…

For now check out the tasty beers below! (Full disclosure, I did NOT consume all of these beers, I dont know if that is humanly possible!)(The list was even longer!) There was also some ridiculously good food, including this lovely miso gravy one pictured below:

1) Mongozo Premium Pilsner (Organic, Fair Trade, Gluten Free!) + the Miso Poutine!!!
2) Townsite – Charleston Tripel
3) Biercraft – Pilsner
4) Unibroue – Trois Pistole
5) Lindemans – Framboise Lambic
6) De Koninck
7) Palm Speciale
8) La Trappe Quadrupel (TRAPPIST)
9) Parallel 49 ‘Seed Spitter’ Watermelon Wit
10) Le Merle
11) Saison Diego – Green Flash Brewing Co California
12) Driftwood Brewing – Son of the Morning
13) “Frulirium” – combo of Delirium Tremens and Fruli Strawberry
14) St Bernardus ABT 12
15) Brother Thelonoius
16) La Trappe Tripel (TRAPPIST)
17) Chouffe Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel
18) Affligem Blonde
19) Liefman’s Fruitese
20) Gouden Carolus Classic
21) La Chouffe
22) Mort Subite Framboise
23) *secret!* – Westvleteren 8 – I was told a crazy story about how
this beer has a year long wait list in Belgium!
24) Verhaeghe Duchesse de Bourgogne
25) Glazen Toren Ondineke
26) Glazen Toren Saison d’Erpe-Mere

Hoppapalooza III…there are no words. No wonder this VCBW event sold out in hours!!! I did my best to keep track of what beers were in what photo and I’m 99% sure this is correct.
Below are only a fraction of the beers you could have tried at the party the Alibi Room threw… and after the jump there are some party photos including the 3 different kinds of chili they had for the craft beer lovers.

Taken from the Hoppapalooza guide pictured below:
I. You’re awesome.
II. Beer is awesome.
III. Brewers are awesome.
IV. The Alibi Room is awesome.
V. Rich Hope is awesome.
VI. VCBW is awesome.
VII. If anybody else is feeling like they should be called awesome & were forgotten. You’re awesome too.

Vancouver is Awesome, thinks that’s awesome. :)

CLICK THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE! 

1) Parallel 49 Brewing – “Seed Spitter” Watermelon Wit
2) Iian Hill of Yaletown Brewing – Framboise Sour Raspberry
3) Central City Brewing – Garys LTD release Pilsner
4) Central City Brewing – Rauchbier
5) Upright Brewing – Four – Light Session Saison
6) Upright Brewing – Five – Farmhouse Hoppy Pale Ale
7) Conrad Gmoser & Tak of Steamworks Brewing – “Vitamin P” Pilsner
8) Lighthouse Brewing – (CASK) “Barnacle” White IPA
9) Conrad Gmoser & Tak of Steamworks Brewing – Espresso Stout (made with JJ Bean Espresso)
10) Derrick of Whistler Brew House – “Game Day” Hopped Up Pilsner
11) Iian Hill of Yaletown Brewing – (CASK) Centennial Dry Hopped IPA
12) Elysian Brewing – Peste Chocolate Chili Ale
13) Tariq Khan of Big Ridge Brewing – (CASK) Wrath of Khan Home Grown Hop IPA
14) Ninkasi Brewing – “The Believer” Imperial Red Ale
15) Spinnakers Brew Pub – (CASK) Cascadia Dark Ale
16) Phillips Brewing – Amarillo Single Hop IPA          (people were calling this the ‘sleeper hit’ of the event)
17) Odin Brewing – Freyas Gold – Kolsch Style Ale
18) Red Truck Brewing & Dave Varga – R.I.P. Taylors Crossing IPA
19) Iian Hill of Yaletown Brewing – Oud Bruin Sour Brown
20) Driftwood Brewing – (CASK) Naughty Hildegard ESB
21) Conrad Gmoser & Tak of Steamworks Brewing – Copper Roof ESB
22) Parallel 49 Brewing – “Hopparazzi” India Pale Lager
23) Tofino Brewing – (CASK) IPA dry hipped with Spruce Tips   – ***This was my favourite of the night! Tasted like rainforest!***

Rich Hope was there to perform sets during the event. SO GOOD…check out where he was actually playing!

L to R: Pemberton Beef Chili, Veggie Chili, Fraser Valley Pork Chili

Opening night of Vancouver Craft Beer Week was this past Friday…and boy did it deliver! So many kinds of beer from so many amazing local breweries. Check out the photos below and then check out the event listings…there are still tickets to a LOT of amazing pairings, tastings and showcases!

The Benton Brothers cheese was amazing as always. One of our favourites was the Alpindon – a cheese made in Creston, BC!



Below was my favourite beer of the night, the Red Racer Raspberry Wheat… two of my favourite things fresh raspberries and beer – in one? Perfect.




This was a mini version of the Cicerone vs Sommelier event. Try a food item with beer and one with wine and determine which pairs better. I actually picked the wine for this one! Even though the beer on its own was delish!




White Bark (above) and Farmhand (below) – some of Driftwood Brewery’s amazing beers.


^this is the Official Collaboration Beer for VCBW 2012 – the Cascadian Brown Ale. SO GOOD.

Another week, another meal and this time it’s…

DINNER WITH… KAREN PINCHIN!

Karen Pinchin, is one busy lady and she sums it up pretty well on her website: write. edit. cook. tweet. repeat.

As you might gather from that statement, Karen is a jack of all trades…she writes, she cooks, she tell stories…you may recall a little thing called Rain City Chronicles?! I’m sure you know by know that she’s one half of the brilliant team that created this wonderful event that happens so frequently in our city.

Well she ALSO just finished her Culinary Diploma from Northwest Culinary Academy, and whipped out (pun intended!) some fancy cooking words at dinner that I had to write down and google later…

Well those are the basics on my dining partner…now onto the dinner at Che Baba on Kingsway. Your mouth is about to water…be prepared.

Wonderful wine to start the meal off…

Poached Pear and Endive Salad - with almonds, gorgonzola and sweet mustard dressing

Perfect time to segue…. Do you remember a while ago when we made a print version of VIA and in it we had two recipes and a video to go along with it? Well the Grouse Grind meal was made by Karen!…refresh your memory by watching it here.

Oh and I’ve got to mention that Karen and her partner have one of the cutest dog’s ever, who modelled for us in that very same magazine…thanks Luca!

Warm Caramelized Onion Tart – with Bleu D’Auvergne and rosemary

Of course I had to ask Karen the Dinner With questions!:

Favourite Foods?:”Like flavours to have in your mouth?” (Karen, this is why we love you.) — “Gelato = salty taffy w/ dark chocolate chunks and sea salt. I get positive flashbacks 20mins later.” – “Classic? Moules-frities – but the mussels have to be done on the bbq and the frites have to be double deep fried!” – “Homemade bacon! – Maple bourbon bacon, like what I made at the Mini Maker Faire last year.”

Favourite Restaurants?: Campagnolo – “Homey atmosphere, great for family gatherings/receptions and dinners”; Bo Laksa King Bubbles and Bits – “I’m on the hunt for the best laksa, they have the best that I’ve found in Vancouver so far!”; My House – “Now that I have the skills to make something!”

Wild Mushroom and White Truffle Risotto

Che Baba has a daily fish special, and as you see above, this one did not disappoint!

If you could have dinner with one person, who would it be…?:
“Wendell Berry…he thinks/writes/speaks about our relationship with food and the land – philosophical characteristics of our world’s existence. If we’re going to come up with a solution to our food situation, he’ll be part of it. I’d love to have him for two hours at dinner.”

Homemade Macarons – all of them were amazing, as was the chocolate.

Once again, I have to thank the amazing staff at Che Baba for hosting us and feeding us some AMAZING food.

Stay tuned for the next installment in our Dinner With… series, set at another one of Vancouver’s best restaurants with another one of Vancouver’s best humans.

But what if that network is stretched across the country? Or what if it’s too much energy and too disorganized to reach out to everyone one at a time? In such cases we can feel alone and overwhelmed when dealing with some of life’s biggest challenges. Vancouver’s own Tyze offers a solution.

Tyze helps people help each other. A Tyze network is a set of online tools that makes it easy for people to form personal networks of support. Practical tools include things like:

A private way to communicate
A message and shared calendar system
Ability to assign and accept tasks
A way to share pictures and stories
A way to securely store and access files

It’s all completely secure and private. It removes the hassle and time of emailing and calling everyone one at a time. And it takes just moments to set up.

For Christabel, a young woman caring for her mom who has cancer, mobilizing a support group on Tyze has been “a godsend.” Christabel’s mom’s network has about 14 people in it and when they were all gathered together online, life got easier. “I only had to send messages out once,” says Christabel. “For example I’d put out a message saying, hey, mom needs a ride to the doctor tomorrow, and someone would always step up. I can’t imagine those kinds of results over email alone.”

Christabel and her mom

For another member, John, Tyze was used to coordinate care for his dad who lived in another country. “Dad was aging and we weren’t able to track his condition well from afar. Once we set the Tyze network up, we could view photos taken by neighbours and see what he was up to every day. One neighbour we invited in said she was so relived to be asked to help since she’d wanted to pitch in before but just didn’t know how.”

People use Tyze in a myriad of different ways, from coordinating support after a cancer diagnosis to scrapbooking priceless family memories, “future proofing” by having all their care preferences and legal documents saved in the vault, communicating with a small group of friends or a team and much, much more. To see how Tyze could benefit you, you should sign up for a free 30 day trial at Tyze.com.

It was Cow Power that I immediately thought of when I heard about Urban Stream Innovations Inc, an emerging Vancouver greentech company that looks to harness not rural cow poop but the food waste of us, we herds of urbanized humans, and turn it into something much better than smelly waste in a restaurant’s dumpster.

Wes Regan, who is the VP of Urban Stream and a recent graduate of one of SFU’s co-op programs, joined me for coffee yesterday afternoon and gave me the rundown on this super interesting project that’s in a pilot phase right now.

The meat and potatoes of Urban Stream involves a heat and nutrient bioreactor that Wes has developed with his business partner, Nick Hermes. Patents are pending on this complex piece of machinery and the one thing that my tecnhically-challenged brain understands is that it’s going to help reduce the amount of food waste that ends up in our landfills. It takes food waste from restaurants and composts it in 2 cycles.

Another thing that’s easy for me to understand is that this system they’ve developed not only processes food waste and composts it but it also produces food in a super exciting (to me and other local food nerds) process that involves aquaculture; live fish or prawns that exist in a closed system where their waste, along with the food waste/compost, gets turned into nutrients to grow leafy greens and other vegetables! Above are a portion of the blueprints for the complete system, which will be made available to local organizations and restaurants, as well as the simple composting machine on its own which will help them reduce the amount of waste that goes to the landfill. Eventually it’ll be illegal for businesses to send it there, and creative entrepreneurs like Wes will hopefully be filling needs like this in places we didn’t know imagined.

Over coffee, Wes told me about the SFU co-op program he graduated from – the Faculty of Environment Geography – sparked his involvement in the green tech sector, and that this company literally grew out of what he studied along with his co-op placement with B.O.B. (Building Opportunities for Business) from 2009-2011. The course examines how business development can be used as an effective instrument of sustainable community development, and Wesley is a prime example of someone who has benefitted from these programs and is now deeply involved in social entrepreneurship projects.

Wes has promised that as soon as they get one of these machines up and running in the Downtown Eastside that I’ll be the first person he calls to come take a look, so stay tuned! Aquaponics await you with the ghost of blogging future.

Stepping into Vancouver’s Chinese Garden, beyond the white walls, is an experience unto itself – you’ll find yourself carried back in time and space to a 15^th century Ming Dynasty scholar’s home, an oasis in the heart of Vancouver.

Caves have traditionally been thought of as transportational dwelling places of immortal or otherworldly beings. For the first time ever, on Obscura Day, join us for an hour-long guided tour to explore the stories and mythologies that enforce the mysterious call of the grotto.

It’s hard to describe the beauty of the caves and the feeling you have when entering a place very few people ever have. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Thanks to Atlas Obscura and the Chinese Gardens for having us on this historic and awesome day…already looking forward to next year!