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Victoria on your own Breweries


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We will be do a RT Seattle Alaska cruise with a quick stop in Victoria BC. The cruise line is offering a brewery and a pub tour. Both pretty pricey considering my DH can't drink beer as he is GF. We still want to visit the local breweries if close and easy to get to by the port.

 

Anyone have insight into this?

 

Thanks!

 

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You've already hit the nail on the head - the cruise tour is a very pricey package considering how cheaply you can visit the same breweries (or even better, different ones which won't have a coachload of tourists descending simultaneously!) While GF is very trendy in Vancouver's restaurant scene, local breweries offering GF brews anywhere in the region are very slim pickin's indeed - I can't say as I can think of anywhere to recommend that would enable DH to join in on the beer-drinking fun.

 

If you've already toured breweries elsewhere then there won't exactly be any new info supplied (and very few have actual tours - the local trend is 'tasting rooms' which became legal just in the last ~3 years). You can usually see the tanks from where you sit, and the staff serving the beers might have a bit of chat for you, but going behind-the-scenes doesn't happen (the cruise tours, at least when I looked into them, are of brewPUBS and stick to the pub part).

 

Your best bet to sample local brews and allow DH to get something he can drink safely would be to visit an actual pub, with a full selection of ciders/spirits/wines where gluten won't be an issue. My go-to stop in Victoria is Swans, which is a brewpub so the beers are made in-house (British style, and actually served from a cellar at the correct temp for beer - they have a second 'normal' temp one for the poor schmucks raised to believe beer must be served from a refrigerator). For a range of beers from different breweries, so you don't need to move around between sites, The Churchill is probably the single best location to hit up (50+ Craft Beers, from across the PNW); Garrick's Head and Bard & Banker do a mix of craft and regular brews in English and Scottish pub-style surroundings respectively; the Sticky Wicket in the Strathcona hotel has the biggest number of beers in total in Victoria I believe (mostly macro-lagers but still a good number of craft beers).

 

All of the above are easily walked to - it's < 30mins on foot at a leisurely pace down to the central harbour from the pier (Empress Hotel is the most obvious landmark) and they're all close to that (Swans, the furthest, is ~10mins more walking).

Edited by martincath
missed a link
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  • 3 weeks later...

Don’t forget Spinnakers it’s the oldest brew pub and easily the best in town I think . Swans has good beer but Spinnakers pub has a much better atmosphere and view hands down. Try the pull cask bitter a true English bitter it’s the beer and pub that started the whole brew pub industry in Victoria , definitely not to be missed!

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