Who doesn’t love Four Winds Brewing? They’ve been winning awards left, right and centre since they opened a year ago. The biggest award is probably their Silver Award for American-Style Brett Beer at the World Beer Cup. Too bad for me that they’re all the way out in Delta, on the other side of the tunnel. We went to visit them back in mid-April during the Easter long weekend. It was a beautiful, relatively stress-free drive! 🙂

NOTE: Four Winds did some renovations on their tasting room in late May, so it probably doesn’t look like how it does in these photos anymore.

The guys there were super-nice and let me freely take photos of the brewery. I got a sneak peek of some beers being barrel-aged 😉

Drive past some wonderful farmland and you’ll come across one of those business park setups…like a strip mall but with warehouses and offices. We saw the Four Winds van parked out on the street, so we knew we were in the right place.

Be sure to check their Twitter and Facebook for their hours during holidays.

Goes without saying! I would go one further and stipulate that you should support craft breweries. If your beer is the product of some mysterious marketing company and they’re not upfront about where the beer is actually brewed, you’re not dealing with the kind of true craft beer that I want to support.

Awards!

Nice tasting room. I wonder how it looks like now, after their renovations. I like the blue and white design motif on the wall. The Four Winds design is smart and classy.

I just realized that the decal on the floor doesn’t actually point in the right direction. (What-everrrrrr Dennis…)

Anyways, you can consider yourself a beer geek if you can identify what those four elements are. Lowest tier of beer geek, but beer geek nonetheless.

Schwaaaag!

Hmmm, I should’ve bought one of these swing-top growlers.

I LOVE THESE GLASSES! That little curved lip fits nicely into your lips! It’s practically shoving beer into your face!

Growlettes.

Crates are crafty and cool but I need a lighter growler transportation system…

Cold bottles to go. That’s their delicious Triplicity in the bombers. Speaking of Triplicity:

The best BC tripel I’ve had so far. Although I’m looking forward to when new Belgian-centric brewery Dageraad starts brewing tripels…I’d love to do a side-by-side comparison.

Another award…and why look, it’s Thirsty Writer Joe Wiebe‘s book, Craft Beer Revolution!

The Four Winds guys invited us into the back and let me take as many pictures as I wanted! 🙂

It’s nice to see this side of the process.

Beautiful, consistent design.

Bottling machine. I think.

So that’s how labels get onto the bottles…alternating front and back labels on a single roll.

The wall of barrels!

Be still my heart…

Hmmmm…

Not just whiskey barrels, but wine barrels too. Can’t wait to taste the end product.

A favourite.

Much want.

Canadian malt.

Terroir, muthafuckas!

Gorgeous shiny vessels.

Too bad they weren’t mashing when we were there. I bet that would’ve smelled great.

I think this board was kinda out-of-date…

Enough with the mechanics, let’s taste some beer!

I’m always happy when I walk into a place that has at least one Four Winds tap handle. I tried the Oat Porter at Portside Pub a while back and it was off-the-hook creamy and delicious.

I think this was the Phaedra Rye/Wheat IPA. Really flavourful brew. They’re really generous with the samples here, and super nice!

Thanks Four Winds, I gotta visit again soon!