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It’s now been just over seven months since this beer column began and I’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to feature Tofino Brewing Company.
The small brewery located in paradise on the west coast of Vancouver Island typically keeps things pretty quiet.
They have a handful of core beers, some of which you can find around the province, but their new releases are typically seasonal and often exclusive to their tasting room or liquor stores on Vancouver Island.
But in the fall they released a new creation that looks like it could easily be a new core beer for the brewery moving forward.
It’s the Spaced Hazy IPA, which is somehow the brewery’s first ever hazy beer, and they truly knocked it out of the park.
I didn’t see this one in the fall and only recently discovered it at my local liquor store a few days ago, but when I tried it I knew it was finally time for Tofino Brewing to get its shine in this column.
For me personally, this is as close to a perfect hazy as you can get. It’s a great mix of juicy and refreshing, and it certainly doesn’t try to overpower you.
Here’s the brewery’s breakdown of the Spaced Hazy IPA:
Mired in a galactic-scale mystery and confounding scientific uncertainty, the exact origins of this hazy IPA are as theoretical and unknown as the universe in which we float. The nebulous yeast allows for celestial liberation of tropical flavours previously hidden in the earthbound ingredients. Unbound thiols in the experimental hop additions create an entropic expansion of flavour as endless as outer space.
With a description like that, I figured I’d let the brewery do the leg work on this one and not take away from their artistic words.
However, I can promise the beer drinkers out there that if they enjoy a well-crafted hazy, they’re going to love this Tofino Brewing creation and I encourage you to go track it down.
Finally featuring Tofino Brewing in this column also gives me a chance to highlight something very cool that they have been doing since the fall.
The brewery now uses eco-friendly rings for their four- and six-packs, which are made from fibre by-product waste.
They perform as effectively as plastic, but you can compost them, which reflects Tofino Brewing’s efforts to prioritize the environment as they produce award-winning beers for us to enjoy.
So two thumbs up to Tofino and all the other craft breweries out there who have moved, or are considering a move, to more environmentally-friendly packaging like this.
Josh Duncan is the NowMedia news director and a craft beer lover. Reach him at [email protected]. His beer column appears every Saturday afternoon in this space.