Cycle City Tours’ New Tour of Vancouver’s Craft Beer Scene

Cycle City Tours, the Vancouver-based bike tour company, recently launched their Bikes x Beer x Brunch. The tour takes riders through some of Vancouver’s most historic neighborhoods with stops at three of the city’s newest breweries to sample craft beers and food pairings. On the tour, riders learn about how beer is brewed, meet some of the brewmasters, and find out how hard these breweries are working to keep their delicious beer on shelves. Of course, you also get to sample some of the brews along the way.

The tour starts at Spokes Bicycle Rental on the outskirts of Stanley Park. Following the Seawall, our guides, Josh Bloomfield and Nick Anderson, chose a route that mixes beautiful scenery with stops to appreciate local history. Riding in to Railtown, we stopped at the first brewery of the day: Postmark Brewing. The brand new brewery is located in an architectural gem of a building with a 15-tank brewing station producing four main beers along with rotating seasonal brews. Co-founder and managing director, Nate Rayment, explained that plenty of “blood, sweat, and tears” went into making their dream a reality.

Back on our bikes, the tour weaved through Strathcona to Bomber Brewing, conveniently located on the Adanac Bikeway. Bomber Brewing, named after the beer league hockey team that the founders belonged to, is another new comer in East Vancouver, having opened in mid-February 2014. Aiming to please both beer geeks and the everyday beer drinker, Bomber Brewing makes a variety of beers including an ESB, a Pilsner, and an IPA.

After Bomber Brewing, our ride took us past Ken Lum’s iconic East Van cross as we followed the separated bike path along Great Northern Way. After a slight climb, we found ourselves at Main Street Brewing Company. Nigel Pike, one of the founders, showed our group around the operation, which is located in one of the last remaining buildings of a brewery from the early 1900s. Main Street Brewing features a unique cask program where they hold unfiltered beer without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure. Their brown ale, known as a British brown, is made from seven different hops, coffee, roasted malts, finished with molasses, and was absolutely delicious.

Excellent tour guides, like Josh and Nick, are able to create unforgettable experiences while ensuring guests are safe and comfortable. Should you want to enjoy more beer than the samples provided, the tour guides can place purchased growlers or cans in their bike trailer. A healthy amount of food will be provided throughout the tour in order to demonstrate the principles of beer pairing. Tour sizes are limited to 12 riders and include two tour guides to show you around to each of the three breweries. Tours take place every other Saturday from 11 am to 2:30 pm all summer long, ending on September 1.

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