Driftwood Brewery's Naughty Hildegard ESB

Driftwood Brewing is a local Victoria brewery that's been around for a few years now. Their Blackstone Porter is excellent, and their Farmhand belgian-style ale is a favorite of the wife's. Mind you that might just be because she really likes the artwork.
Speaking of artwork, check out the label on this beer! Might be a bit embarrassing if you're in the liquor store lineup behind Grandma. This is an Extra Special Bitter, an English-style ale that uses plenty of hops as a bittering agent. Generally, North American style ESBs tend to go a bit overboard on the hops front with their ESBs. English-brewed ESBs like that brewed by Fuller's Brewery are generally softer tasting. This one is rather nice, extremely aromatic, but not too heavy on the bitter aftertaste hops normally produce. Don't be fooled by the ESB tag, this is still several steps below an IPA in strength.

While we're on the subject, lets talk about hops for a bit. Hops are the fourth ingredient in beer after barley water and yeast. They can be added while the wort is boiling (wet hopping) or after it has cooled (dry hopping). Generally speaking, wet hopping is used for flavouring and dry hopping for aroma.
Hops are a sort of climbing perennial and the part used is the cones, which tend to be packed with resin. There are several varieties, with four German styles being considered the Noble Hops, due to their high aromatic and low bitterness. Fuggles and some Kentish varieties are also considered "noble" by some brewers. Most of the hops in BC are grown either in the Fraser Valley, or are imported from the Willamette Valley.
The use of hops in beer stems back to the 11th century, when numerous botanicals were added to prevent beer from spoiling. Turns out, hops actually worked best.
At one point, the use of hops was actually banned in various places due to various powerful entities controlling the other sources of botanicals used in beer, most famously the Bishop of Shrewsbury (although this is possibly apocryphal), but hops are universally accepted nowadays.
The most aggressively hopped beers are of course the India Pale Ales (the Phillips IPA in the background here is quite nice). Keith's India Pale Ale is not actually a pale ale in anything other than name. I'm fond of telling anyone who'll listen that Keith's is like a white basketball player: no hops.

But you needn't have anything as face-melting as Central City's IPA or Dogfish Brewing's 90 or 120 Minute to enjoy a bit of hops. A nice introduction to a hoppy beer, and one that employs more aromatics and few bittering hops (which are an acquired taste) is Propellor Brewing's ESB, readily available at BCLDB.

"Guinness: it turns yer shoite black."
-Christy Moore

Let's talk about a pint of the black stuff.

Guinness

Many of you namby-pamby nancy-boys with undescended testicles are afraid of Guinness. "Oooh," you say, "It's too thick." Well, your Mom's too thick, and that didn't shtop me lasht night, Trebek.
The truth is, Guinness has fewer calories than a glass of skim milk. Sure, the roasted flavour takes a bit of getting used to, but it's no more bitter than coffee, although not that frappe' nonsense with more sugar than a bowl of kellog's frosted sugar lumps.

Guinness is a style of beer known as a dry Irish stout. This means that it contains barley, hops, water and yeast, just like any other beer, but a portion of the barley is roasted to add flavour and colour. Arthur Guinness is often thought to have coined the term "stout" when he started brewing at St. James's Gate in Dublin. This, as they would say in Ireland, is a load of bollix. However, he is one of the first proponents of the style, which is a derivative of porter.
Initially, Guinness was quite a strong beer, in the 7 to 8% ABV range. Nowadays though, it's a quaffable 4.3. This is because Guinness is owned by a giant soulless multinational corporation, who sucks.
There's quite a bit of cultivated mystery surrounding Guinness and how to properly serve it and so forth, and most of it is sheer unmitigated nonsense. The whole two-pour system was originally from the cask serve days when flat beer was poured into 3/4ths of the glass, and then topped up with fizzy beer when ordered. There's no need for it today, and it doesn't taste better the closer you get to St. James Gate. I had a pint of Guinness in Derry that was twice as good as the one I had in Temple Bar, and really the only difference between them was that Dublin was full of drunk Germans, who ruin everything.
Incidentally, all Guinness uses isinglass from processed fish bladders to aid in filtration. So you can forget about bloody water purity.
The Wolf and Hound in Vancouver will make you a few Guinness mixed-drinks, and they're quite good. You can also cook with Guinness, and it pairs nicely with rich meats like lamb, and sharp cheeses. If you can find it served extra cold, and you purchase it, may a thousand vengeful leprechauns rip out your liver and use it as a trampoline. Guinness should be drunk, like any stout, moderately cool.

Phillips Hammer Imperial Stout


Yes, I know, another Imperial Stout. But here's a little better news for you: this one should only set you back 5 bucks or so. It's not quite as snappy as the Rogue, but is just as opaque and crammed full of roasted flavour, while not being as dry and bitter as most of you seem to find Guinness.

Phillips is one of the best breweries in B.C., and is certainly unafraid to put out some experimental beers. For those of you looking for a recommendation for a 6-pack, you can't go wrong with Slipstream Ale, or their brightly hopped IPA. Phoenix Lager is also a great place to start if you're used to drinking light beer and want to get into something with a little more flavour.

Some of you may remember Blue Truck Ale, which is now Blue Buck Ale. A medium-bodied reddish ale, Blue Truck was so named after the Phillips delivery truck, a bright blue beater of indeterminate age.
Unfortunately, Red Truck brewing sued Phillips (who was basically just the one guy at the time) for copyright infringement, forcing Phillips to change, and giving the name to their Extra Special Bitter: Accusation Ale.
Problems could have been avoided if Phillips had just stuck with their original delivery vehicle: A Subaru GL wagon.

Rogue Imperial Stout 2008

Rogue is an American Brewery based out of Newport, Oregon. You can find most of their huge variety of ales all over the place, and many distributors carry them. Normally expect to pay around seven bucks for something like a Hazelnut Brown. This one cost me just under twenty.
Much in the same way that India Pale Ales are much stronger and hoppier than regular Pale Ale, Imperial Stouts are often sky-high in alcohol and hop content. Both beers required heavy hopping and high alcohol percentages to survive transport: the IPAs went to far-off India, and the Imperial Stouts to wintry Moscow. The "Imperial" moniker refers to the beer's popularity with the Czars and their entourages.

At 11% alcohol-by-volume and as inkily black as Stephen Harper's soul, Rogue's version makes Guinness look like a white wine spritzer for effete art critics. It's the kind of beer you'd expect Boris Yeltsin to order, in-between liver transplants. There is very little carbonation, and an overwhelming sense of density: it's almost like drinking dark chocolate cream. There's little sweetness though: this is not a malty bock like Vancouver Island Brewing's Hermannator. Cellaring the Stout (it's an '08) has allowed the alcohol's bite to mellow, but it has done little to mute the fact that there are a hell of a lot of hops in this beer.
Most stouts are of the Dry Irish variety: roasted overtones, not much bite. This stout snaps like distilled alligator.

Highly recommended, but share it with a few friends. An alternate suggestion would be North Coast Brewing's Old Rasputin, available at most BCLDB stores.