When Prohibition ended in 1933, President Roosevelt ended his speech with the now famous quote “What America needs now is a drink”. After all its folly, even the President realized how important beer is to society.
Nearly 2,000 people filtered through the festival grounds at Olympic Plaza to sample more than 100 different beers on tap from 45 regional and international brewers. With the sell-out crowd driving Village business, and room night bookings pacing ahead of the same weekend in 2012, according to Tourism Whistler, event organizer Liam Peyton saw the festival as a major success for the resort, with plans to improve guest circulation for next year’s iteration.
If you needed any more proof of the resort’s penchant for the best brews around, look no further than the inaugural Whistler Village Beer Festival, which brings 45 of the best brewers to Olympic Plaza for one day only, where over 100 different individual beers will be on tap. And while there will be a smattering of international brews available, the goal of the fest is to showcase some of the amazing craft beers being produced right in our own backyard.
I’m a firm believer that Whistler is at its best when we use Whistler to its fullest,” explained Gibbons, using village-wide examples of the World Ski and Snowboard Festival, Crankworx and the Olympics to illustrate his point. “If they’re placed in a stand-alone location then it’s at times tougher for that to happen.
Whistler’s inaugural beer festival is such a success story that organizers and resort partners are already talking about an even bigger and better festival for 2014.
Franche is the brewmaster at Whistler’s Brewhouse, where he alone develops his recipes and chooses his ingredients. The beer made in the tanks upstairs flows nowhere but into the pint glasses of customers downstairs, there’s no kegging or off-site sales. Unlike a lot of the larger craft breweries, Franche doesn’t need to justify his methods as being as cost effective. This gives him absolute creative control over the beer that flows through the taps in this building.
Beer drinkers, like never before, have big choices to make when it comes to ordering a pint. Gone are the days when a small number of big brewers owned the beer market.