Tin Whistle Chocolate Cherry Porter

Up until a couple of months ago, I didn’t like porters. I found them flat and bizarrely without taste. The Longbow Double Chocolate Porter mentioned before was the first porter that I enjoyed, and it got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, porters had potential that I hadn’t previously considered.

This beer adds one huge wallop of evidence for that hypothesis. Where many cherry beers are taken down by a strange maraschino-chemical taste, this one just tastes like cherries. And chocolate. And porter. Really, it’s exactly what it promises to be, and it’s awesome. Three cheers for Tin Whistle; this one is a winner.

Cannery Brewing Blackberry Porter

After all of this lovely stuff with cherries and chocolate and porter, my interest was piqued. Right when I found myself thinking I should see what else was available in the world of porters, I found this.

Dramatic pause here; imagine a taste tester picking up a pint of dark, almost opaque beer. They look at it, admiring the expert pour and its quarter inch of head. They take a sniff, but don’t really detect much because, you know, beer doesn’t really smell like much. They shrug and take a sip. After a fraction of a second there’s squirming: it almost looks like they’re going to throw up, except that their eyes lit up and they’re smiling like crazy. Later analysis reveals that they were trying to swallow the beer before the instinctive urge to shout “holy shit!” made them soil their clothing.

Cannery Brewing Naramata Nut Brown

There doesn’t seem to be much point to writing about beers that I don’t enjoy. Although it is definitely fun to wonder at what stage in the brewing process someone peed in the beer, I’d rather recommend beers that people will enjoy. And this is one of them. It’s a prime example of a nut brown and is extremely drinkable, but the nut flavours seem to be more obvious more unadulterated than any other nut brown that I’ve tried. It’s great.

This time around, I’m only going to be talking about BC beers that I’ve encountered recently, and none of them are from Vancouver. I had been ignoring local beer after having the mediocre-at-best stuff from the Granville Island Brewery and Steamworks, as well as some better ones from filthy taps… I do know that there are some really good beers around Vancouver—at least one—but I’ll get to those some other time. There’s a brewery in Victoria that’s so good I’m going to have to dedicate an entire post to it.

Phillips Brewing Company Original India Pale Ale

This is about the best IPA that I’ve ever had. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s hopped up impressively—right up there with Hophead. The difference is that this one actually has a memorable flavour. Underneath all of that bitterness is a sweet, almost citrus fruitiness. This is one of those beers where you have to stop every few sips and smile.

This was the first Phillips beer that I had, and it partially inspired my last trip to Victoria, despite the fact that I only tried one other Phillips beer there:

Phillips Brewing Company Draught Dodger

It’s a maple cream ale. My previous experience in the genre was Granville Island Brewery’s version, which is far and away their best but is still relatively plain. The Draught Dodger is anything but plain. It’s sweet, yes, but it’s also very complex and doesn’t have the thick finish that lots of other cream ales have.

It’s very good. I could see myself drinking too many of these, if they were easier to come by in Vancouver.

Phillips Brewing Company Black Toque India Dark Ale

Every once and a while, a beer comes along that just plants me on my ass. Conveniently, it arrived during the crappiest snap of winter so far, which is exactly when I like really dark beers. Describing this beer is tricky. It’s the spawn of an IPA, a stout and a nut brown ale, and in a very good way. It’s bitter and crisp like an IPA, but also big and malty.

This is one of those beers where every few sips your train of thought is interrupted by how bloody good your beer is. The only other beers I’ve experienced this with are Brasserie Dupont’s Moinette, Antares’ Imperial Stout, and:

Phillips Brewing Company Amnesiac Double IPA

The only words I have for this are expletives of delight. It’s everything I like about an IPA, but more. It’s bitter, it’s citric, it has a flavour like I’ve never encountered in a beer that wasn’t refermented in the bottle and it finishes in a way that only a well-raised 8.5% beer can finish.

This thing will put you down smiling.

Howe Sound Brewing Garibaldi Honey Pale Ale

This is a relatively normal pale ale, but with honey added. From the taste of it, I’m guessing that the honey was added post-fermentation, because it’s quite sweet and the honey flavour is clearly present.

The sweetness diminishes the solo drinkability of it slightly, but this is an still eminently quaffable beer, and would pair extremely well with, say, BBQ ribs.

At $10 for a 1-litre resealable bottle, this is definitely something worth checking out.

Howe Sound Brewing Whitecap Wheat Ale

This one describes itself as “a refreshing Belgian-style wheat beer with hints of coriander and orange.” I’m not sure if I’d agree entirely. It tastes, to my mouth, a bit more German than Belgian, and the orange/coriander notes don’t quite manage to climb above the hops and say hi.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ll be getting this again, but it’s not because this beer is bad, by any means: it’s just outshone by other beers that I could get instead. For example…

Antares Imperial Stout

Wow. Kudos to Argentina: this beer is awesome. It grudgingly allows light to shine through, but barely. The carbonation is appropriately light. But the taste of it…

This is what Guinness wishes it was. It’s powerfully malty and has a bitterness just big enough to take a couple of good, solid shots at the caramel part, but not enough to win the match. It’s thick, but it doesn’t hang around too long: the finish is full and then it leaves cleanly. There’s no residual bitterness. Where Guinness has a kind of clamminess to it, this has a sharper edge which seems to be largely responsible for the perfect finish.

Find this beer, and enjoy it.

Antares Kölsch

From what I gather, the story behind this beer has something to do with a group of people in Germany who were religiously anti-lager. As in, if you were one of them and you were caught drinking it, you’d be shot. Does this make sense? No. But in light of that, this beer does.

It’s a lager brewed in the style of an ale. It could be offered to those tempted by the devil brew to satisfy their temptation without endangering their soul, or whatever. It’s as drinkable as a lager, but it has more to offer in the flavour department. I could see myself coming to enjoy this beer on hot days.