Streetcar Brewing – Spiced Pear Popsicle Sour

Streetcar Brewing – Spiced Pear Popsicle Sour Review

In this series, Beer Me BC is pleased to preview an upcoming What’s Brewing BC feature on the North Vancouver brewing scene.

In our first installment, we looked at Wildeye Brewing. Now we spotlight another hidden gem North Van brewery.

Streetcar Brewing: look for this sign in the back lane

Today, Beer Me BC is happy to review its first-ever beer from Streetcar Brewing. This tucked-away tasting room is the personal favourite of Greg Holmes, executive director of Lower Lonsdale Business Improvement Association. He’s one of the folks behind the Shipyards Brewery District, a cooperative initiative involving  six breweries (hopefully seven later this year) clustered in the area close to Lonsdale Ave and just East, on Esplanade.

The sad news for the District this week is that the recent COVID lockdown has forced postponement of an eagerly-anticipated Easter Craft Beer Crawl, which was set to kick off this weekend. It’s been postponed; stay tuned for any updates on that on their Facebook Page.

The unassuming brewhouse at Streetcar Brewing

While we wait for that, we’re going to do our best to make Mr. Holmes happy by sharing a treasure we unearthed during a recent visit to Streetcar. As Greg notes, it’s the smallest of the Shipyards sextet—and in point of fact that applies to Streetcar’s brewhouse as well. However, that hasn’t stopped their team from creating something we absolutely loved: the Spiced Pear Popsicle Sour. Although this is not one of Streetcar’s core packaged beers, we were fortunate enough to be able to take it home in crowlers (1L cans).

Unsurprisingly, the liquid pours a colour reminiscent of pear juice. Kind of a dull light gold, or maybe a robust straw. Or ‘flax’. We ended up spending a while trying to find names for this grapefruity colour. But it’s the right colour for a pear popsicle beer.

This (thankfully) unfiltered beer is also opaque, as you would expect a natural fruit beverage to be. It’s not pulpy, but it’s beyond hazy.

There is definitely also a nice pear aroma, complemented by what we assume are the spices used. Maybe the kind you’d use in pie, like nutmeg or cinnamon. Considering that this is a crowler, there’s no handy ingredients list on the label. Also, no page about it on the Streetcar website. (A couple of links are provided below, but they will neither confirm nor deny anything we hypothesize here.)

Streetcar’s Spiced Pear Popsicle Sour in the tasting room

The reason we took this beer home was the amazing pear flavour enjoyed on tap at the brewery. Upon cracking the crowler, we encountered more or less the same experience. It’s kind of the pear-shaped answer to the celebrated Granny Smith Apple Pie Ale at East Vancouver’s Storm Brewing. 

The beer is billed as a sour, and there is a mild tartness to it. But the slightly acidic bite is completely dominated by the sweet fruit flavour that we had to have more of. For a (nominally) spiced sour, this is an easy-drinking experience.

As we like to say, the objective of beer seeking is to find a flavour or experience we haven’t discovered before. Streetcar’s Spiced Pear Popsicle Sour easily meets that criteria. We’ll probably never have this much delicious pear in a beverage again, so we’re glad we grabbed two litres of it!

Here’s Streetcar’s Instagram post from when the beer was released. It may not be around by the time you get to their location, but that’s no reason not to go. There’s a whole Brewery District to visit!

Untappd Reviews → 

Streetcar Brewing

123A 1st St East
North Vancouver, BC V7L 1B2
www.streetcarbrewing.ca

The 2021 Shipyards Brewery District Easter Craft Beer Crawl [postponed]

The Easter Craft Beer Crawl itinerary. Stay tuned for the next Crawl.