We are gearing up for our 3rd annual OKTOBERFEST celebration!  Our dates this year are Thursday, Sep 28th and Friday, Sept 29th from 6-9 pm.

Tickets are required for this event and will go ON SALE this Thursday, Sept 14th at 9 am.   Tickets will be Online Only - $10 / person.  Buy on our ONLINE STORE - note there are no physical tickets to pickup, just bring your order confirmation.

What to expect this year:

• Live Music!
• Festive Food (Food Truck and other goodies - see menu below)
• BYO Stein (0.5 L or 1 L size only) 
• Dress to Impress - Dirndls and Lederhosen encouraged!
• German-style Beers & much more
• Festive Beer Garden w/ Firepit (this is an indoor and outdoor event)

This is a family-friendly event and dogs are welcome in the beer garden (on a leash).

German-style Beer Line Up:

• Oktoberfest Festbier Lager —> will also be released in 4-packs to go!
• Jagged Pilsner
• High Noon Hefeweizen
• Surfer Rosa Gose w/ Rose Hips

Plus another 8 (non-traditional) beers to choose from!  We are encouraging folks to bring their favourite stein (0.5 L or 1 L only) for fills.  We will have a few available for sale from last year!  Some high alcohol beers will be off limits for 1 L fills.

Food Menu

• Happy Schnitzel Food Truck —>  Currywurst and Weisswurst + Sauerkraut, plus Schnitzel
• Alpine Organic Bakery —> Pretzels 
• Alpine Organic Bakery —> Beer Bread & Cheese

Following on the success of our limited release ICE BEAR Session Ale, we've got a BRAND NEW, light ABV beer release.

Introducing, CRUSH FACTOR, a Session Ale with dank and citrus hop notes in a juicy finish.   It has all of the flavour without all of the alcohol, coming in at 3.5% ABV.

ABOUT THE RECIPE

Malt Bill: 90% Golden Promise (a tasty malt from the UK that gives beautiful mouthfeel and a light malty-biscuityness to pump up the flavour) & 10% Wheat Malt (also for mouthfeel and a zesty tang).

Hops:   First Wort and Whirlpool Hop = SIMCOE & Dry-Hopped = SIMCOE & STRATA

Yeast: Hydra Yeast from Escarpment Labs to harness that extra juiciness.

ABOUT THE LABEL

Our designer Mary Binsted 'crushed' it yet again with the label artwork.  For a 'little' beer, we went with a 'big animal', a walrus. But not just any walrus, an ancient walrus from the Yukon's Ice Age!  Walrus fossils have been washing up on the shores of Herschel Island (an island in northern Yukon in the Beaufort Sea), including some that are over 50,000 years old. 

Enjoy this new beer on tap and in cans around the territory this summer! 

It's that time of year again, when we release our first batch of SPRUCE TIP into the wild!

Each spring we forage for the most vibrant, green spruce tips. This year we had help from our friends who gathered a bumper crop… which means, we will have more Spruce Tip than ever before!

FIRST RELEASE DETAILS

The 1st batch will only be available at the brewery WEDNESDAY JUNE 14th. 

For the diehards, Pre-Orders are available the night before (TUESDAY, JUNE 13th) from 8 pm to midnight on our website. 

We always set aside over half the batch for walk-ins on the release day, so there should be lots to go around. Get a taste of the first batch on tap and bring your growlers to fill.   

Subsequent batches will be released in the coming months.

Our 8th Anniversary celebration is fast approaching!  

Join us Saturday, June 3rd from 12-7 pm for a NEW beer release, a special food truck, giveaways, and all-day DJs.  

No tickets are required, we have lots of room. As always, this is a family-friendly event, and well-behaved dogs are welcome in the beer garden.

Beer Release

We've got a brand NEW beer release coming to toast the 8th Anniversary!  Introducing SHADOW DANCER COLD IPA! 

We couldn't resist the chance to brew another Cold IPA, which was a style we first tried out with our friends at Woodcutter's Brewing (remember our SNAG release from February 2023). Shadow Dancer was brewed with all pilsner malt and Kolsch yeast, we dialed in the water chemistry just right to let the hops pop for a crisp and bitter finish.  The beautfy combo of Simcoe, Mosaic and El Dorado hops provide a very crushable citrus and tropical combo, with a touch of pineyness.

P.S. We finally got to feature an aquatic species on the can, the beautiful Arctic Grayling!

Shadow Dancer, makes its debut splash at Haines Beer Fest (this weekend).  It will officially be available at the brewery on June 3rd.

Food

We’ve got the HAPPY SCHNITZEL FOOD TRUCK (by Harry & Yvonne).  If you missed the schnitzel, spaetzle and fancy salad from the old Wolf’s Den restaurant here in Whitehorse, the previous owners are bringing back the goods!  Come hungry.  

We will have our usual snack options from various local businesses: Alpine Organic Bakery, Klondike Kettle Corn, Tum Tums Meats, Landed Bakehouse, and Cultured Fine Cheese.

DJs all day

As for entertainment, we've got an awesome set of local female DJs playing the whole day:

• Mega Krahn
• Cozmic Zest
• Monstera

w/ Flow Artists (Audrey & Marianna) playing mid-afternoon

Giveaways

As is tradition, we'll have our usual BDay Giveaways. With your purchase, draw-to-win from our prize table.  There are hundreds of dollars worth of prizes to be won.

We’ve got a brand-new beer release today.  It’s called ICE BEAR, and is a collab with local photographer, Peter Mather, for his new photo and filmography project on the Yukon’s Ice Bears.

What is an ‘Ice Bear’ you ask?  Well you should go see the film,  KINGS OF THE NORTH - The Search for the Last of the Ice Bears to find out (see premiere info below).

Ice Bears are essentially Grizzly Bears here in the Yukon that delay hibernation so that they can feed on the late-fall salmon runs of Coho, Chum and Sockeye.  While they fish in sub zero temperatures, in freezing cold rivers, they get covered in ice, hence the moniker, ice bear. 

Ice bear photographed by Peter Mather in 2020 on the Klukshu River.  Credit: Peter Mather 2020

If you can’t make it to the film (which premieres in Whitehorse April 6th and in Haines Junction April 14th), you should follow Peter Mather for all his fantastic photos of ice bears and much more.

AND NOW… MORE ABOUT THE BEER!

THE BEER

We wanted to get creative with a new beer, but how to tie the recipe to ice bears? 

As soon as we heard Yakima Chief Hops (YCH) had been experimenting with FROZEN fresh hops, we thought it was a match made in heaven! FROZEN BEARS MEET FROZEN HOPS!

This ‘trial’ hop product out of Washington state, harnesses that raw nature of freshly harvested hops. Brewing with Fresh Hops is tricky otherwise as you ideally want to use them within 24 hours of harvest, not something easy for us to do in the Yukon.  So what YCH does is they take those fresh hops and immediately freeze them, preserving the delicate nuances of the freshly harvested hops. They then concentrate the lupulin into pellets with their patented cryogenic hop processing technology (essentially processing them under extremely low temps with low oxygen and high nitrogen).

To really see what these hops can do, we used them in a very low alcohol beer style, a Session Ale (aka Session IPA/India Session Ale)  to let the frozen fresh hops shine.  We dry hopped the beer with 100% YCH 301 Trial Cryo Hop Pellets – the Trial Blend  of Citra®, Mosaic® & Simcoe®.

There were a few tricky logistics to get these hops up here!  They had to be kept frozen and arrive within 2 days.  So the 44 lbs we ordered, were packed into their shipping boxes with dry ice and shipped from Washington via FedEx to Air North Cargo, and then up to Whitehorse.  We were pleased to see the ice still intact when we opened the boxes, and the brewers sure had fun playing with the dry ice that morning.

Fun times with dry ice in the brewery!

Now making a low ABV beer is tricky, as you want to avoid it tasting thin and watery.  So we really tried to pull out all the stops to make this a light ABV, aromatic ale that has some body to it. 

We are super happy with the result! It has a juicy, medium body (finishing at 1.016 FG) with a light maltiness (think cracker and white bread) and delicate fresh hop character.  The aromas and flavours are subtle and blend beautifully together with notes of lemon, orange, pineapple and honeydew melon. Bitterness is on the sublte side too.

Love to hear what you think!

GET THE BEER & WATCH THE FILM

The beer is premiering at Winterlong on March 28th (today) and it will also be available at both premieres in Whitehorse and Haines Junction. 

We got a little preview of the film the other night, and it sure is a labour of love for those involved. Big ups to Peter Mather and Peter Zenkl for reaching out to us to support this film!

CHECK OUT THE TRAILER

GET TICKETS

Ice bear under northern lights, photographed by Peter Mather in 2020 on the Klukshu River.  Credit: Peter Mather 2020