Hip Hop Hippity Scotch

November 24th, 2014

Hop Scotch festival was this past weekend and it was truly a blast. It was my first time attending and, based on the video from last year’s event, I had a particular set of expectations: busy, packed, loud, and busy. As it turned out, it was most of those things, but they were far from being the negatives I was expecting. The crowd was boisterous but civil and friendly, and there was more than enough beer and spirits to go around.

They even brought out a pipe band! Pretty cool.

Don’t ignore the Scots

Naturally, you might say, I was there for the beer. But I did get to try some phenomenal whisky as well. The two notables for me were the Macallan 1824 Amber and the Penderyn Madeira Single Malt. The two were vastly different, and not least because the latter is from Wales. Whisky like these two were good reasons to sample not just the beer at this year’s Hopscotch Festival.

But on to the beer

Yes, on to the beer. Boy, was there ever a whole lot of beer! The best part was the preponderance of our Metro Vancouver and British Columbia craft breweries. Bomber, Main Street, Yellow Dog, Four Winds, Parallel 49, Postmark, among others from around Vancouver. Howe Sound, Lighthouse, Bad Tattoo, Longwood, Mission Springs, Phillips, and many more from farther afield. There were literally too many beers (for me) to try, even considering that I went with two friends and we each got different samples at each booth and shared them. Not that I’m complaining. It was great.

The stand-outs

So any post about Hopscotch by default must include a top arbitrary number of beers from the event. I’m so arbitrary that I’m just going to pick two:

1. Yellow Dog Shake a Paw Smoked Porter
2. Longwood Whisky-Infused Stoutnik Cask

Yep, I’m just that arbitrary. Not to say that there weren’t others beers on offer that were phenomenal, but these two really stood out from the crowd. They Yellow Dog is the recent award winner for Best in Show at this year’s BC Beer Awards and it was well worth it. A great, flavourful porter whose richness is augmented by the smoky, campfire aromas. Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.

And the Stoutnik cask was amazing. Sure it was the end of the night, and it was strong, and a bit sweet. But Stoutnik on it’s own is a great. Infusing the beer with whisky was a master-stroke. Too bad it was only for Hopscotch, but I feel privileged to have tried it.

And one final shout-out

Finally, I need to once again give a shout out to the organizers for providing a free shuttle bus and transit tickets to keep people out of their cars. That was genius and we took full advantage, even getting treated to a freestyle rap battle on the way downtown. Already looking forward to next year.