Battle Royale No 7: Abel vs. Cain

As a passport-bearing denizen of Northern Ireland, I am no stranger to family in-fighting. In the wee parcel of land from whence I sprung, men have bled and died while not realizing that they have much more in common with each other than they do with either the people of the Republic of Ireland or the British Royal family, that bunch of teat-sucking German vampires. No prizes for guessing which side I tend towards.

However, I am all too happy that my folks eschewed the blinkered life of the oul' sod and came instead to Canada, where I can even make friends with a Liverpudlian without the attendant stigma associated with same. Well, without most of the stigma...


But anyway, here we are at the much-overdue B.R. numbah 7, and it's time for a little good old fashioned inter-brewery throw-down. In one corner, the much-lauded Fat Tug; in the other, Twenty Pounder gets another shot. Ding!


Driftwood Fat Tug IPA vs. Driftwood Twenty Pounder Double IPA

Round 1: Fight!


Now, many of you might already be saying, "Hey! You already said you didn't like the Twenty-Pounder! How fair is that?" Well, not fair, actually, but let me put this out there. Ignoring all a priori notions of which beer is better, I laid aside my initial impression, and really tried to examine the beer. After all, while taste is subjective, some folks are really digging this brew. 


So here we are then, and at first sniff, here we are with some seriously hoppy beers. Seriously, the Fat Tug's got more hops than a jackrabbit smoothie, and a whiff of the Twenty-Pounder indicates the same. Warning: the 'Tug starts Alexander Keith's corpse spinning in his grave, but the Twenty Pounder has him hitting 9000 rpms. Dude just hit VTEC, yo.


On first blush, the Twenty Pounder has the edge on body and colour, but it's the Fat Tug's floral hop bouquet that draws first blood.

Round 2: Fight!


Obviously, I've got to sample the Fat Tug first off, as the Twenty-Pounder has the heft to be an A-Bomb to the tastebuds. I am become DIPA, destroyer of Palates. It's hard to believe that this stuff is even better on tap than it is in the bottle. It's fresh and light and delicious without being wimpy. As much as I love Red Racer, Fat Tug is stiff competition against any IPA.


But it's not up against any IPA, it's up against its hairy-knuckled big bro'. Which beer, it must be said, has some of that stewed-grapefruit character of Southern Tier's Un*Earthly, possibly my fav beer if I had to choose. But where the Tier balances that double shwack of hops with a big malt body, the Twenty-Pounder has an astringent bitterness that's off-leash. No mistaking the big alcohol content either. Second round's gotta go to the 'Tug.

Round 3: Fight!


There's a third left in each bottle now, and if I didn't have a liver the size of a wagon-wheel, I'd be slurring my sibilants. As it stands, I still stand, and so do our two combatants, though the Twenty-Pounder has been taking a beating.


But something funny's happened. The initial bite of both beers has been muted by their intense hop concentrations to the point that the acrid, astringent taste of the Twenty-Pounder is no longer off-putting. It's been blunted by repeated sipping and funnily enough, the Fat Tug is almost like a Race Rocks in its maltiness as its hoppiness is masked by the solar flare of resin coming off the Twenty-Pounder. Which do I prefer? 


Hmm. Round 3 is a draw.

Round 4: Fight!


We're down to the dregs now, and the numbers of lysed brain cells are hitting the trillons. So I hope you appreciate the research, dear readers, as the chances of me ever doing a crossword puzzle again just went out the window. 


But, in the final round, we do have a winner. The Twenty-Pounder is just too much like work. It's not quaffable in any degree: the intensity of the hops is simply exhausting to the palate, and then you refresh yourself with a sip of Fat Tug and wonder why you're bothering with the other. After all, the Twenty-Pounder is only 2% stronger than the 'Tug is anyway.


Result! 


Fat Tug wins, despite giving up a hop-load and ABV advantage to the heavy-weight Twenty-Pounder!

Post-Battle Review:

More is not necessarily better. Hard to believe I'm saying such a thing about beer, but there you go. I maintain that Driftwood Brewing is the Brewery to beat on the West Coast for range-wide excellence, but their regular IPA remains too good for a misfire of a DIPA to take out in single combat.

Driftwood Fat Tug
Recommended if:-one "schwack o' hops" is enough
-balance is favoured over sheer mass
-still worth ordering for the double-entendre name
Not Recommended if:
-you only buy cans
-tastebuds be damned, I need to kill my brain!
-you don't like IPAs. In which case: this is the wrong B.R. for you, boyo.
Driftwood Twenty-Pounder
Recommended if:-ABV and IBU high-scores matter more to you than taste
-For those about to have a major hang-over, we saluuuute you
-you probably should try it at least once anywayNot recommended if:-you're not a hop fan. Because this will melt your face.
-you favour balance over outright intensity

-there's Fat Tug available. Because it's better.

Friday Night's Alright For (beer) Fighting: Taking Suggestions For Battle Royale 4

EDIT: @sticklebract has come up with the "S'Macro Smackdown", a slugfest for the small macro-breweries like Okanagan Springs, etc. Now to select a champion for each: coming Friday!

The countdown has already started to the next Battle Royale but, sadly, my beer fridge appears to have been stocked by the Mother Hubbard Delivery Company Ltd.. As in, there's nothin' interesting in there. I therefore turn to you, erstwhile reader, to give this poor dog a bone: help me out with a pair o' brews I can throw down for an epic show-down.

So what would you like to see? U.S. vs. Canada in a gold medal beer action? A pair of Belgian blondes mudwrestling? (hey, get yer mind outta the gutter) Something silly like Lucky Lager vs Dogfish Head 90min? What about some draft-beer dodgeball?

Please leave a suggestion in the comments section, send me an e-mail, or fire something over to me on Twitter.

The winning suggestion will receive whatever Keith's IPA I still have in my fridge. Or, I dunno, what else have I got around here... uh, a Red Racer toque, maybe? Or a firm handshake. Anyways, something, I promise.

Watch Friday to see who enters the ring.

Battle Royale No. 3: The Glass Jaw Joe Edition

Phillips Hop Circle IPA vs. Alexander Keith's IPA

Round One: Fight!

Last post, some folks thought I was being a little hard on poor ol' Alexander Keith's IPA. Let's be clear: the real Alexander Keith had a beard like a rhododendron bush and looks like he ate lightly boiled babies at breakfast. Comparing his Masonic magnificence to the current Labatt-run accountant-brewing is one way to highlight the insipidity of Keith's "IPA". I've got another.

But hang on: when I twittered about this upcoming battle, the responses from the beer-swilling cognoscenti were universal in their confusion. "Is that even a competition?" one asked. Another compared it to a "viscous (sic) lion taking on a timid mouse." Wasn't this B.R. going to be as one-sided as Mike Tyson fighting a man composed entirely of ears?

Oily felines notwithstanding, we're talking here about a huge, multi-nationally owned brand that sells thousands of hecta-liters of beer and has essentially limitless resources and funding, going up against a beer brewed by a guy who started in the business by maxing out his credit cards and making deliveries in a crap-can Subaru GL. You're damn right it's unfair.

Still, we've got to handicap David so that Goliath doesn't get the bejesus kicked out of him in the first round. As such, I'm tying one hand behind Hop Circle's back by drinking both beers right out of the bottle. I regard myself as against the winification of beer and deplore aping the oneophiles with their snorting and snuffling into their glasses like a pig after a truffle, but beer tastes better when you can smell it while you're tasting it.

I'm also going to attempt to remove Phillip's home court advantage by creating a sort of East Coast ambiance through the use of selected props. Having thought about it for a while, I planned on using a Sou'wester, a cod, a bottle of screech rum, and a Rita McNeil CD.

Unfortunately, by the time I got home today I didn't have the opportunity to get any of those things. Therefore, I reached in the freezer and pulled out a trout I caught myself (which is why it's so pathetically small), created a sou'wester by sticking yellow Post-Its to a baseball hat, and "found" an authentic Rita McNeil CD. For some bizarre reason, we had the Screech already.


All right, down the hatch!


Y'know, it's not terrible. There's an old joke that goes: "Nothing is better than Budweiser. Given the choice, I'd take nothing." That's not the case here. On first taste, the Keith's is almost like a real beer. Now the Hop Circle.

Oh. Oh wow. Okay, so what happened there in my commentary on the Keith's is that I had a problem with my brain being missing. Keith's is not beer. This is beer.

In comparison to the robust (resisted a temporary urge to say "out-of-this-world") flavour of the Hop Circle, Keith's IPA is an IPA the same way that Chinese air-to-air missile footage is real. Real IPAs are exploding with hops. Keith's has less hops than a squashed grasshopper. Less hops than a kangaroo with polio.

Less hops than a white basketball player.

Round Two: Fight?

What's the point?

Look at this man here:
This be-joweled chap is an East India Company Officer: the fat bastards that IPAs were originally brewed for. Does he look like he'd be satisfied with a watery yellow imitation? No, he Does Not. Try sending these guys Keith's IPA in the 1800s, and their reaction would make the slaughter of the Sepoy Mutiny look like high tea at the Empress.

On the other hand, if you Fedexed them a coupla six-packs of Hop Circle, I think we could all breathe easy. Just like the historical IPAs, Phillips has created something packing a far more intense experience than your everyday beer. If you think the six-packs are good, just try growling it sometime!



Result!

Anybody want a Keith's 5-and-a-half-pack?

Post-Battle Review

No surprises here, but Keith's IPA got hammered like a myopic carpenter's thumb. What a bloodbath: even with the extras it wasn't close.

Just so you know, I bought both sixers at Liquor Plus between Douglas and Blanshard: and the Hop Circle cost me all of fifty cents more. For my small investment, I got a real beer, and let me just say that the beauty of living in Canada, with all its back-asswards semi-repealed prohibition nonsense, is that you can buy a craft beer, brewed by people who are striving to produce the very best thing they can, and it's going to cost you pennies more than the heartless, soulless, greedy, conniving, cut-throat, incompetently-produced corporate swill.

Phillips Hop Circle IPA
Recommended if:
-you like a hoppy west-coast IPA (who doesn't?)
-you're going to see this movie
-you want something one step lighter than Red Racer's IPA

Not Recommended if:
-you've been probed
-you don't like hoppy beers
-you own a REAL sou'wester

Alexander Keith's IPA
Recommended if:
-there's a fire and you need to pour something on it
-that's pretty much it

Not recommended if:
-you own a working tastebud
-you understand that IPA doesn't mean International Police Association
-Zima is also available

Battle Royale No. 2: All Hands on Deck!

Lighthouse Deckhand Belgian Saison vs Driftwood Farmhand Belgian Saison

Round One: Fight!

Confession time: I'm not a big fan of Belgian-style beers, and already I can hear the satisfying *gasp*-plop-clink as beer snobs everywhere widen their eyes in surprise and their monocles fall out into their tulip-stemmed glasses of Chimay. Well, stuff it anyway. I don't mind admitting that I'd rather have an IPA or a Stout, given a choice.

Thus, I figured it would be a good idea to spread the work around a little for the critiquing of a new beer from Lighthouse Brewing, as it's easy to hijack the credit and even easier to shuffle off the blame.

Lighthouse is well-known for what I'd refer to as workmanlike craft brewing. Their Beacon IPA is not as punchy as Phillip's Hop Circle, or even Granville Island's Brockton, but you're assured of consistent quality if you order a pint at your local, and I'll have you know I had two flats each of Beacon and Race Rocks as the beers at my wedding, and I'm still happily married. Coincidence?

Well, yes, absolutely. Marriage is about communication and commitment, not beer.

Anyway, Lighthouse's new "Small Brewery - Big Flavour" series aims to take that conservative brewing style and chuck it out the window. Shipwreck Triple IPA, Navigator Doppelbock and now a new Belgian Saison dubbed Deckhand all aim to take on the premium craft brewers at their own game.

What better match-up, then, than a head-to-head with Driftwood's well-established Farmhand Saison?

I dragooned both my better half (Katie), her crazy French-Canadian friend Lysanne, and Lysanne's annoyingly handsome boyfriend Todd (you won't find any pictures of him here as he makes me feel extra insecure in my ginger pudginess) into being associate judges. To avoid a priori assumptions, I didn't tell them which beer was which, and they were eager to begin...


While they're tasting, a quick word about the beer labels. The Farmhand sports the sort of interesting art we've come to expect from Driftwood. It's colourful, distinctive, and the pitchfork theme will appeal to fans of American Gothic, though it might alienate Frankenstein's Monster.

Whoever drew the artwork on the Deckhand label, however, has obviously been watching a lot of anime, and I don't mean Pokemon. Talk about your huge tracts of land.

Anyway, let's hear from the judges:

-Lysanne:
"Wow! They're totally different. This one [Farmhand] has much more flavour, but this one [Deckhand] is a much easier drinking beer"
-Katie:
"Yeah, this one you can just drink this [Farmhand], that one [Deckhand] you have to think about it."

Consensus? Round one to the Farmhand

Round Two: Fight!
Lysanne (on the left) thinking hard. My wife, the amorphous blob.
Note: do not call your wife "the amorphous blob". Not even once. Divorce is expensive, and receiving a sharp kick to the gentleman's area is painful.

-Lysanne:
"At first I'd say, this [Farmhand] is just a beer to enjoy, to go with a meal..."
-Katie:
"Yeah, this one [Deckhand] I like it, I like it, but you can only have one."
-Me:
"It's more Belgian-y, which is surprising, because it's the Lighthouse." [see, this is why I enlisted help]
-Katie:
"Yeah, no I really like it!"
Todd:
"I kinda think the-"
-Me (interrupting and being pedantic)
"Well, they've got three, the Navigator, which is a Dopplebock, and the Shipwreck, which is a triple IPA."

Consensus: Round two to the Deckhand!

Round Three: Tie-breaker!

-Todd:
"I don't think we liked this [the Deckhand] last time as much as we do now."
-Lysanne:
"I think it's going better with the cold cuts [prosciutto and others from Choux Choux Charcuterie]
-Katie:
"I liked it better, but I could only have one."
-Me:
"Deckhand it is!"


Result!

Deckhand narrowly wins by decision!

Post-Battle Review

Farmhand remained everybody's go-to favourite for everyday quaffing, and the bottle was emptied first, but it's a surprising upset win for Lighthouse's Deckhand! It might have a silly bottle adorned with ludicrous boobies, but the beer inside has a flavour that's full and rounded and perky and... sorry, what were we talking about again?

Oh, right. Well, it's a victory for Lighthouse's Deckhand, and I'm happy to say that if you're looking for that authentic Saison flavour, it's your go-to beer du jour.

Driftwood Farmhand Belgian Saison
Recommended if:
-you're looking for an easy-drinking Belgian
-you're a pitchfork enthusiast
-you want your beer on tap

Not Recommended if:
-you have a collection of tulip-shaped glassware
-you've been stitched together from corpses and re-animated by a mad scientist
-you know the Belgian national anthem off by heart

Lighthouse Deckhand Belgian Saison
Recommended if:
-mmm, boobs
-you want a ester-packed big Belgian
-you're in the navy, but not the Village People kind

Not recommended if:
-you're embarrassed by labels
-you don't even like Belgian chocolate
-you live in a land-locked country

Battle Royale No. 1

note: from time to time, and I can't be any more specific than that, my liver will become a battleground where two brews will go toe-to-toe to see who will be crowned the victor. It will be just like MMA for beer, except without the implied homoeroticism. Two beers enter, one beer leaves. (Actually, strictly speaking, both beers leave, after processing.)


Phillips "Hammer" Barrel Aged Imperial Stout vs Driftwood "Singularity" Russian Imperial Stout

Round One: Fight!

There are stouts, and then there are Imperial stouts, and like most things, the Imperial means "better". Imperial pints? Better than regular pints. The Chrysler Imperial? Better than a K-Car. The Empire Strikes Back? The defense rests.

What we have here are two Imperial stouts in the Russian style, both barrel-aged, and both as serious as an aneurysm. Which I'm probably going to have by trying to drink both. Phillips have barrel-aged their already-excellent Hammer Imperial stout, a personal favourite, but they're going up against Driftwood's Singularity, a hugely intense beer from a company that's grown aggressively over the last two years, and has my go-to IPA in their lineup with Fat Tug. Ah, yes, I really do enjoy a good Tug.

What?

Anyway I have paired these two heavyweights with a nice nigiri sushi. This is not a recommended pairing, I just happened to have it, and this exercise is not for empty stomachs.
Both pour insanely dark, making the soy sauce seem about as black as some insipid herbal tea.


The Hammer is smoother and more balanced than its non-barrelled version. Still packs a wallop though. Now the Singularity...

Ye Gods! I can see time! Just how strong is this stuff?


8.5% and 11.8% respectively, but that's not the whole story. The Hammer seems almost quaffable now after the insane intensity of the Singularity. To compare it to the well-known density of Guinness, the Singularity is like blackstrap molasses next to a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a large quantity of water. Like the Pacific.

Round One to the Singularity.

Round Two: Fight!

I seem to have lost the ability to use chopsticks. Makes sense, as a significant portion of my medulla oblongata has dissolved.

The Singularity could not be more aptly-named. It's like drinking neutrino star with a hint of bourbon. By comparison, the Hammer seems as mellow as a smooth jazz bassline.

Round two to the Singularity.

Round Three: Fight!

...

Result!

Singularity wins by K.O.! Of me.

Post-Battle Review

For fans of Phillips, the new barrel-aged version of their excellent Imperial stout is a must-try. It's mellow but complicated, and is a great slow sipper.

However, for sheer complexity, Driftwood's Singularity is as dense as sub-atomic string theory, and I have to award it the prize for being the top quark. It's simply a huge beer, trying to drink a whole one by yourself is something only an idiot would do. An idiot like me.

Phillips Hammer Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
Recommended if:
-you own parachute pants
-you're a closet-communist
-you wanted a bit more complexity added to the regular Hammer

Not Recommended if:
-you're questing for the ultimate imperial stout
-you're a whiny little pipsqueak who throws himself down airshafts just because his dad cuts off his hand
-you think Molson Canadian has flavour

Driftwood Singularity Imperial Russian Stout
Recommended if:
-you need to tear a hole in the space-time continuum
-you really hate your brain/liver
-you want an intense taste experience

Not recommended if:
-you can't spell "continuum"
-you have feeble tastebuds
-you don't have any friends to share it with