Damn It, Missed: Twenty Pounder

This beer blog is teetering on the brink between, "Hey, don't you have a beer-blog?" and, "Hey, didn't you used to have a beer blog?" The readership bar at the bottom of your screen looks like a performance evaluation of the NYSE. And/or the dwindling popularity of Lindsay Lohan.

Now, I've the best of excuses for this blogging malaise, or rather a triumvirate of them: new job, new house and a surfeit of other writing gigs. Which gigs, dear reader, I actually get paid to do, and with the amount of beer required to deal with the stress of (a) New Job and (b) New House, you'd best believe I'm like a one man Oktoberfest, and thus need the funds.

Anyway, I soldier on, and hope you will too, as this blog inevitably degenerates into the sort of off-the-cuff twaddle that might be jammed within the pages of a Supermarket brochure on food-pairing ("rich meats like lamb go best with a dark beer, like Molson Canadian Export").

And so to battle. Not B.R., I haven't the strength for one of those, although I've got the kernel of an idea for the next one, and it's a Duesenberg. No, today it's time to review Driftwood Brewing's latest, the Twenty Pounder Double Imperial Pale Ale.

At the outset, I was more excited about the release of this beer than pretty much anything else this year. Yeah, yeah; I bought property. Yawn-snooze-coma-D.N.R. A double-IPA from Driftwood Brewing? Hold on t'yer hat Ma, she's gonna be a big one!

If all the breweries of BC were forced to don sashes and compete in some out-moded chauvinistic beauty contest, Driftwood would be the contestant who played a cover version of Motorhead's Ace of Spades on the bagpipes, sashayed around in a shimmering one-piece until the floor was littered with bugged-out eyeballs and then recited the entire works of the Venerable Bede in Latinate, balanced the national budget, and cured all known diseases. In short, they rock and/or roll.

So when I heard that Driftwood was going to be putting out a beer that might be a local rival for my all-time-fav Southern Tier Un*Earthly, I immediately began hyperventilating and fell out of my chair. My favourite style by my favourite brewery? How great is that?

Well, and assuming you've read the title of this post you shouldn't be surprised, not.... great.

Someone packed the powder wrong, and the Twenty Pounder fails to live up to it's For Those About To Rock artwork and instead blurts out its charge with a sad trombone noise. Wah-Wahhhh. It's just all over the place and skunky, and ye gods, the aftertaste is as astringent as... uh... a really astringent thing.

Dan over at smallbeerblog did an excellent post on this beer where he asked the question (and I paraphrase), "Do we criticize the small brewers as harshly as we do the big guys?" It's a fair question, especially as I, like you, would preferably support our hard-working local brewers. But why coddle them?

We don't need to. Driftwood is still the best brewer around. When my Cali peeps come up North, all they ever talk about is how amazing Fat Tug is. Take that, Lagunitas.

But as for the Twenty Pounder, well, it's a misfire. Part of the problem of setting such a high standard for your beers is that they get judged by that standard. This beer comes up short, but only because when I see the Driftwood label, I expect nothing but the absolute best.

New, But Any Damn Good? Granville Island Brewing Imperial IPA

The word "Imperial" gets tossed around a lot in beer circles these days. Imperial IPAs (okay), Imperial Bocks (fine), Imperial Oktoberfests (yes...), Imperial Pilsners (now hang on a sec-) and Imperial Hefeweizens (say what?) are all styles that have just sort of popped up over the last little while. The original "Imperial" designation, as all we pedantic beer-types know, was originally reserved to describe stout porters brewed at high alcohol concentrations in 18th century Britain and shipped to the Russian Imperial court.

Nowadays, "Imperial" just means a stronger version of a style of beer that wasn't as strong before. Personally, I blame the communists.

As such, when @jantweats implies that an Imperial India Pale Ale is an "imperialization of an imperialization," he's not quite correct. Yes, you could point out that IPA was created to be shipped to India, and probably wouldn't exist if not for British Imperialism, but in the truest, stuffiest, hair-splittin'-est way, he's wrong. I know he's got a fancy, big-city newspaper column and what-not and I'm just a drunkard with a laptop, but this is the internet, chums, and guess who's got two thumbs, an opinion and no pants on.

This guy right here.

Anyway, just sticking "Imperial" in front of something doesn't necessarily make it better. For example, if you take a regular, battle-hardened Stormtrooper with nerves of steel, intensive weapons training and killer instincts and then go and make them an Imperial Storm trooper, they will be unable to hit a eight-foot tall Kokanee Sasquatch with fully automatic blaster fire, and then get shot in the face by a lady with two cinnabons taped to her head.

What's more, brewing an Imperial IPA is not like suddenly coming out with an Imperial version of, say, an ESB, for which there're not a lot of yardsticks out there against which you might be measured. Bring out an Imperial IPA and you'd best be ready to bear comparison against almost every other brewery out there. So, Granville Island Brewing, do you have what it takes?

Yes. Damn it! I'm not very good at this suspense thing. But, quite frankly, this is a very good beer, probably even nicer than I was expecting.

GIB is, like Vancouver Island Brewing and others, a bit more conservative in its styles than some of the young breweries out there. There's a wide base of appeal for its microbrew and they maintain said customer base by producing beers that are consistent, and delicious, but by no means challenging. I mean, I like Brockton IPA, but it's not really a beer that I would seek out. I'd choose it over, for instance, Beacon IPA if given the choice, but if Red Racer, Fat Tug or Hop Circle are available, then guess what I'm ordering.

So I wasn't expecting a challenger to Southern Tier's Un*Earthly Imperial IPA, and I didn't get one. What I did get was a smooth, very balanced beer with big citrus tones and caramel malts. Just lovely. There's apparently 100 IBUs here, but don't let that scare you, oh knock-knee'd lager-lout, this is such a well-crafted brew, you don't need to be anything like a hop-head to appreciate it. It's a single-varietal (all chinook) and that seems to have eliminated the "bag o' grass clippings" chewiness you get from some of the Yankee IIPAs. I give it four and a half out of five moons. Wait, that's no moon!

Granville Island Imperial India Pale Ale:

Recommended if:

-You're looking for a great beer. Simple as that.

-You favour balance over outright intensity.

-You've got a case of Brockton in your hand and you're staring at the 650ml section.

Not Recommended if:

-You're a little short for a Stormtrooper.

-You're not an IPA fan.

-You use your lawnmower to make salad.

I'm back! Damn it.

Judging from the way my blog readership has dwindled over the past two weeks, I'd say that everybody's pretty sick of hearing about how great my Hawaiian vacay was. Well, here's the good news crab-bukkits, I'm back and I'm as grumpy, wet, cold and miserable as the rest of you. I just have a few more freckles is all.

At least, I hope that's why there's been a bit of a dip in readership. It could be that this is a backlash to my Czechvar diss, which seemed to inflame quite a few passions (I know, I know: I'm an idiot), or maybe the novelty of the Post-it Sou'wester has run its course. I hope not.

Brendan: "Well, I think I'll blog about a beer I like."

The Plain People Of The Internet: "Not good enough. Eat an entire baconjam-smeared honey ham now. Make a top hat out of butter and shoe-polish!"

Brendan: "Uh...actually, that doesn't sound like very much fun..."

The Plain People Of The Internet: "Drink five Singularities! Do a Battle Royale of Drano vs. Clorox! Drink toenail-clipping homebrew!"

Brendan: "Well, I'd really rather not, but..."

The Plain People Of The Internet: "WE DEMAND ENTERTAINMENT!! DANCE, MONKEY!!!"

Brendan: *dancing*

The Plain People Of The Internet: "What a crappy dancer. Let's go download pictures of the Molson Girls instead."

However, I'm choosing to believe that you're all just bored of sunny pictures, and would rather I get down to drinking some good local beer. Well, fine.

One of the things I was really excited to get back and try was Driftwood's Cuvee D'Hiver. I admit it, my French is a little rusty, but I've successfully translated this to mean: "Cuvee D'Hiver." It's a tasty little brew, crisp as anything, and I could really see drinking one after hauling a bloody stupid heavy-looking rake around all day in the Belgian sun. Is Belgium sunny? Well, whatever.

Hey Driftwood! Let's get a cask of this over in Victoria. You've shipped about five of them over to the big smoke, and while it's good to see craft beer making the rounds, let's not forget your loyal supporters down at the Beagle. Trust me guys, you don't want the Plain People riled up.

The other beer I was happy to get home to try is this.

It's another outta-the-park for Howe Sound Brewing, a big fat hoppy Imperial Ale. I love the lolburgers name (it even has "Turn around bright eyes!" in the side comments), but I love the chewy, nutty taste too, especially when you let it warm up a little. The little orange guy expresses it best.

I also have a Rockfish Red, but I'll crack that another day with a fishy-themed post.

Just one more thing here. Driftwood and Howe Sound are great breweries, right? Oh, I'm sorry. According to some random idiot, only one of them rates among the top 10 BC Breweries. Phillips? Nope, not on the list. R&B? No chance. CAMRA Gold-medallist Central City Brewing? Duuurrr, I din't know Surrey wuz in B.C.!

I'm not going to make a top-10 list. Quite frankly, I hate them. Part of the great fun of being a beerthusiast is the sheer variety of stuff there is to choose from. And what would you base the top 10 on? Number of different styles? Overall sales?

If pressed, let me just say that you couldn't put together any proper BC Brewery list without both Howe Sound and Driftwood, and putting Fernie Brewing on a list instead of Phillips or Crannog or Fat Cat or Central City or any number of others makes you a micro-brained, non-beer-drinking hack. And that's no slight against Fernie either. "Try 'em all, big and small" is what I'm saying. Worst case scenario: you'll get an Untappd badge out of it.