If you're from Victoria, or basically have been here for more than a week, you'll notice that almost every restaurant or bar has Phillips Brewery's signature ale –Blue Buck– on tap. Personally, I've never been much of a beer connoisseur, but after my first encounter with Blue Buck I was hooked.
Along with my relatively new found appreciation for beer came the interest in attempting to enjoy other beers, and if that was the case, I may as well start with a 15 minute drive from my house at Philips Brewing Co. in downtown Victoria.
The Lowdown
Myself, and three other Spoon UVic contributors trekked down to the Brewery Saturday afternoon for our 2pm tour and tasting. The tours are beyond easy to come by and cost a mere $6 –even on a strict student budget the price isn't intimidating.
The tour entails: taste testing of 6 of their signature beers –an extra seventh if you get there early enough– a tour of the brewery and history of how Phillips came to be, and finally a Phillips logo glass to take home –now I can look like a die-hard beer fan while I drink Phillips beer from a Phillips glass.
From all the 6 beers we got to taste I can no longer say that Blue Buck is my favourite. Their new seasonal Cranberry Orange Wit called Scarface has stolen my heart. Our tour guide classified it as "basically drinking a cider, but beer" and I don't care if that makes me a fake that my new favourite beer is more akin to cider than anything else because guess who's happy? This gal!
I don't want to let anything else slip about the tour because I want everyone to go for themselves –beer drinker or not– it's worth the time. No one can complain about getting to try 6 glasses of beer for $6 in a forty-five minute time span, but I'll end with just a shred of advice, take a nap after you get home. You'll need it.