For those who think their favourite beer is boring, O'Hare's Gastropub has a crafty brew for you! For decades, the Pacific north-west has exploded with a renaissance of micro brewed, high quality beers. These craft beers are big on style, flavour, and uniqueness.
Fortunately, Steveston is now catching up to Seattle and Portland. Thanks to Grant Bryan and his crew, O'Hare's is a craft beer Mecca with a dozen tasty drafts on tap.
I recently sat down with Bryan and sampled a flight of four craft beers. We began our tasting with Seattle's Elysium Super Fuzz, a blood orange pale ale.
"It's a fun beer," Bryan proclaims. "It looks different with its cloudiness and it tastes different with its citrus flavour. You can drink several of these as it's so approachable."
Another Seattle devilish brew is Hilliard's Chrome Satan. Made in the California common style, it is modeled on Anchor Steam beer, a bold and tasty lager.
Draft three has even more character. The Fat Tug IPA or India Pale Ale from Vancouver Island tastes of malt and grapefruit with a balanced measure of hops to add bitterness and layers of complexity.
Bryan recommends IPAs with spicy food like curries, which is one of my favourite menu items at the gastropub. No wonder it's the most popular craft draft at O'Hares!
Our final beer of the flight is the FNB, the feature Friday Night Beer. Each week O'Hare's brings in a new keg of craft beer.
"The hot word with craft beer lovers is 'what's next? What's new?'" Bryan confides.
Last week, it was Persephone Scotch Ale from Gibsons. Bryan says, "It has a "fireside appeal to me; a dark beer for winter, to sip by the fireplace."
The Scotch ale has plenty of roasted malt, and dried fruit, but it's not sweet or spicy like most winter ales. I would love to sip it with an O'Hare's tasty steak and kidney pie with mushy peas.
To round out the beer experience, O'Hare's has tastings on weekends from 4-6 p.m. Their Beer Club costs $15 to join and every two months you get eight or nine rare craft beers for $65.
Bryan stresses that enjoying craft draft is not the exclusive reserve of beer snobs. "We are an inclusive pub. We want you to understand what you like and what you don't like. Who cares if you can't describe it properly! Do you like it?"
Visit www.ohares.ca for more. Eric Hanson is a life-long Richmond resident, a retired teacher and wine educator.
