Central City Cask Festival 2011

There's this funny thing that seems to happen every time I attend a beer festival - as the day wears on, the glasses go down quicker, the friends become more plentiful... and the notes get messier.

wait... what?!

But thankfully, it's hard to forget a particularly delicious brew (no matter how many of them you consume). The Central City Brewing Cask Festival - the first of what I hope will be an annual tradition - saw the craft beer crowd gather at the brewery in Surrey to sample specially-made casks from 25 breweries.

my lovingly-filled tasting glass

The beer started flowing just after 11 am, and flow it did. Nobody seemed to mind that it was June 25 and looked more like Feburary outside - we had beer! So much beer!

Sunday sipping in Steveston

It had been almost 20 years since I'd last visited Steveston, despite living just 30 minutes away for most of those years. We were finally reunited after our two-decade hiatus this weekend - on Sunday, in spite of (or perhaps because of) our car getting broken into the night before, P and I were definitely in the mood for a pint and a bit of an adventure. So, passenger window taped up with a garbage bag (aka ridin' dirty), we headed south-west to check out the beer scene in the riverside Richmond village.

Local spot prawns being sold right off the back of boats in Steveston