Lucky Lager has been gone from downtown Vancouver for decades, but in recent years something wonderful has bubbled up in the county: a thriving beer scene.
Lagers, pilsners, ales, browns, IPAs, sours and stouts. So many choices, so little time.
Luckily for me, I have a beer tutor: Michael Perozzo of Brewcouver. We met up on a rainy afternoon last week to discuss Brewcouver’s new app and local brewery gossip — and I even learned the “it” beer I should be drinking right now.
Brewcouver’s passport goes high-tech
Brewcouver (a collective project of local brewers and community supporters) launched a paper passport on Black Friday in 2015. In 2016, they distributed more than 18,000 passports, and more than 1,600 people have completed the passport (by visiting all the breweries). Recently, Brewcouver has updated and improved its passport in its free app available on Android and iOS phones. The new app, made possible with funding from Great Western Malting, is the high-tech version of the paper passport — drink, stamp, get prize.
When you open the app, there are several tabs at the bottom. The first is the passport tab. It operates like the paper version, listing basic information about the participating breweries, and allows you to call them or get directions using Google Maps. Each time you visit a brewery, you go to the passport tab, click on the brewery and stamp your electronic passport by clicking on the stamp icon. If you visit all the breweries and complete your passport by stamping each one, you can redeem a prize at Ben’s Bottle Shop or The Thirsty Sasquatch. There is also a map tab with an interactive map and a news tab with the latest Vancouver brewery news. The app solves some of the problems posed by a paper passport, such as leaving a mostly completed passport somewhere and forgetting where you left it — or spilling beer on it. It is less likely (but not impossible) that you will do these things to your phone.