It has become a rare occurrence for me to write about beer these days. While I continue to love and explore this beverage, I’ve tended to focus on friend and community rather than analysis when drinking the stuff. But today I shared several of the best beers in the world with a very good and old friend who is soon to be married and it seemed an appropriate occasion to share my impressions.
We started with the Goose Island Juliet, a sour beer made with wild yeast and blackberries (made in Illinois). This was quite tart, but also balanced and very food friendly. I wouldn’t say it was the most complex sour I’ve ever tasted, but it is certainly excellent with food.
The second beer we had was the phenomenally complex Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme, one of the rarest beers in California and made by aging Lost Abbey’s Judgement Day ale in Bourbon Barrels and French Oak and then adding cherries and inducing a secondary fermentation with brettanomyces yeast to bring the beer up from 8 to 12% abv. This is definitely in the top 5 sour beers I’ve ever tasted, despite a low carbonation level. If you can find this it is worth every penny.
The next beer, Odin’s Tipple from Hand Brewery in Norway, brought incredible balance to the table. Rich, elegant and yet very long and complex, this was a nearly perfect stout-style ale and definitely in the top ranks of the style.
After the Odin’s Tipple the Alaskan Balkan Porter brewed with vanilla beans, cherries and aged in oak chips was not quite as amazing as it would have been outside of the context of the other beers. So, yes this is an excellent porter and far more complex than is normal for the style, but it does not quite reach to the top ranks.
We then continued with the extremely rare and absolutely awesome Founder’s Devil’s Dancer Triple IPA, which they rate as 112 IBUs (100 is the normal max). This was 12% abv and super bitter, but amazingly complex and surpsingly easy drinking. In fact, as someone who normally does not like IPA, I would consider this amongst the best examples of the extreme high alcohol IPA style today. Incredible stuff – and a pure palate wrecker.
Our last beer was the Nogne O Mikkeller collaboration sour ale brewed with Scandavian Cranberries and wild yeasts. This was very balanced and complex, bringing interesting herb flavours and a tart berry component that you’d expect given the ingredients. A very good quality beer and the only one in this tasting that is actually available in B.C.


In an exciting development, I am writing up this beer procured not on a trip to the United States, but rather on a trip two blocks away from my work at a local beer speciality shop. That’s right, a true blue bourbon barrel aged stout has made it across the border and into our stores. I’ve been ranting about the beauty of wood aged beers ever since I lived down in California where such things are not strange oddities but much loved companions. If the recent shipment of this rare beer from North Coast is any indication, we may be able to begin moderate rejoicing here in British Columbia.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever written up what is perhaps not only my favourite go to stout, but also one of the best balanced and most ageable stouts out there. Brooklyn’s Black Chocolate Stout is actually not brewed with chocolate, but rather with copious amounts of chocolate malts. One can certainly taste and smell all levels of dark chocolate in this wonderfully made beer. Further, as part of an ongoing debate on twitter about chocolate and wine, I want to come out on my blog to say that in my opinion no alcohol pairs better with chocolate than stouts. The huge range of stouts is versatile and able to pair with the huge range of chocolate styles, which is precisely what I did with this amazing stout that I aged for 3 years before consuming.







