Dear Songs about Friday: "Bowl" does not rhyme with "Cereal"

First things first. Pray, gaze upon the compelling magnificence that Dan hath wrought:

Truly, this is my Ozymandias moment; when only lone and level sands stretch far away, this crude MSPaint of an elderly gentleman wearing lipstick and holding a bottle of beer that you can no longer get will remind all of the faded glory that was once Yet Another Damn Beer Blog: the Blog that says, "Look on my drinking habits, ye liver health specialists, and despair."

Anyway, after the immense response to my recent Girls Who Drink Beer Rule posting, I certainly wasn't about to let an event like the Smokin Cherry Bomb Saison cask at Clive's Classic slip past. The Missus and I bounded in there around 6ish.

Now, I know Ian will probably disagree with me on this, the cantankerous bastard, but I was a trifle let-down by this brew. Mrs. Damnbeerblogger didn't even finish hers, and she quite ruined it for the rest of the table by mentioning band-aids, which made every mouthful taste like Flinstone's sticking plasters. Of course, then it warmed up a little and you could navigate your way through the smoke to the more interesting flavours, but I warn you, smoked beers are not going to be everyone's bag.

Still, I'm firmly planted up to my withers in the "Any new beer is a good beer" camp, and recognizing that you should never take advice on Saisons from me, as I'm not a fan of the whole tulip-glassed fiddle-faddle, I think the consensus was, "Interesting, but not for everyone." Certainly I would be first in line to taste another collaborative brew from these fine ladies, assuming that I haven't been beaten to death by a pink wellie for saying something inappropriate.

Anyhoo, off to Veneto's for some duck poutine.

Some more poutine, should say. Any time Dave is in the vicinity, poutine happens. And I'm fine with that. As a side note, he's the worst restaurant companion ever if you don't like poutine, as that will inevitably be the only thing he's had on the menu when you ask for recommendations.

I had a Hilde on tap, Mrs. Damnbeerblogger had this.

It's half-and-half White Bark and Nut Brown, and we alternately called it the Brown Bark or the Nut Tree. It actually wasn't half-bad, although the purists out there have probably self-combusted into the squeaky froth-mouthed rage of a pug savaging a tube of toothpaste.

I like that the Wifelet is always mixing beers and being experimental. Too often, the brewing community gets up their own lower-intestinal-tract a bit. Beer is fun! Beer is mixing things together and seeing what happens! Sometimes you get band-aids, sometimes you get Belle Royale.

How Drinking Howe Sound Brewing's King Heffy Helped the Canucks Win.

It's just that good.

Girls Who Drink Beer Rule. The End.

There are a number of reasons that I fell in love with and married my wife. Chief among them, she'd have me.

But there's more than just this bizarre blind spot to an otherwise entirely intelligent person. Wifelet is funny, brilliant, musical, highly-organized, sensitive, sweet-natured, cute, athletic, environmentally-conscious and smart. I'm just ginger. She smells good, she learned to drive stick so we wouldn't have to buy a boring automatic-transmission when we downsized to one vehicle, and guess what? She drinks beer.

One evening last week, I was sitting here surfing the internet randomly and looked up when she said, "Oh wow, this is really interesting!"

"What's that?"

"This Singularity I bought."

*Swoon*

There are many things that make a woman attractive to me. Firstly, yoga pants. Sweet baby Jeebus, Chip Wilson may have turned out to be a heartless business-person who sold out as fast as he could, but that man single-handedly accomplished the greatest leg-related service to mankind since that one guy cured polio.

More important than that though, is a woman who's real. Women who drink craft beer aren't your high-maintenance, gold-diggin', big-lipped white-wine-spritzer-sippin' botoxers. They're also not your bubble-headed Smirnoff cooler types. The ladies of craft beer aren't chicks, broads, or dames: they're women, and they're sexy as Hell.

So what do you bring home when your lady is more about stouts than fur stoles? Why, chocolate of course.

This is Southern Tier's Choklat Imperial Stout, and it's immense. It's also not just for me, it's for the Wifelet too. She likes beers a little different from my usual hop-heavy Super-IPAs. This one's no wimp though: 11% ABV and pure chocolate. The pairing? A Marks&Sparks almond shortbread biscuit. Unbelievable.

Oh, and if you're wondering, this brew is only available at The Strath. Follow Lon on twitter, he's got great selection.

It's my opinion that the success of CAMRA-YVR is due in no small part to the number of double-X chromosomes on the executive. Clive's boasts an all-female-brewer collaborative brew, Smokin' Cherry Bomb Saison, coming up on the 28th of this month. Hit up any craft-beer location and you'll see just as many women as bearded hipsters. It's just more proof that it's a great time to be a craft beer enthusiast in BC.

Another Damn Earth Day

Save the Earth. It's the only planet with beer.

Today is Earth day, a time when you're supposed to show your sensitivity to Mother Gaia by possibly not taking the Hummer to KFC until tomorrow. It's a time to think globally by acting locally, cut down on your greenhouse gas emissions and use organic Viagra instead of powdered Sumatran orang-utan scrotum.

I did my part. First, I left the car at home when I went grocery shopping. Secondly, I bought a nice organic Berkshire roast from a local farm, rather than lamb flown all the way from New Zealand. Thirdly, I passed a cow and, remembering that 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from methane-producing bovines, I punched it in its stupid, Earth-hating face.

Okay PETA-types, calm down, I didn't hurt Daisy one bit. But I did lock gazes with her and give her a really dirty look, which was bloody hard, what with cows not having stereoscopic vision. Gave me a headache.

Then, judging that I'd accomplished a suitable level of self-righteous do-goodery, I went and had a beer.

Unlike my other passion, the horseless motor-carriage, it is possible to enjoy a beer on Earth Day and feel completely guiltless for doing so. Unless you're a neurosurgeon or something. Beer, or at least good beer, is always made from all-natural products, and unless you're quaffing something with Papaya blended into it, almost all the ingredients can be sourced locally.

Organic beer? Well, that's nice, if you can get it, but USDA Organic certification is a bit of a con if you ask me. I'd rather have BC-grown carrots out of somebody's farm than Organic-certified produce flown up from California. First Local, then Organic, and then if you can't get any of that, the stuff that glows in the dark and tastes of bisphenol A.

I can think of no better paragon of locally-sourced, Earth Friendly brewing practices than Driftwood Brewing's Cuvee D'Hiver, which I enjoyed at Tres Fantastico. The restaurant/bistro/cafe was a short 10-minute bike-ride, the brewery's local (3 km away), and all the barley that went into the beer was grown and malted locally on the Saanich Peninsula.

Tres Fantastico is a great little place: you can read my Yelp review here. The beers were served at cellar temp, which opened up the fruity, grassy nature of the brew. Pairing was a very reasonable and delicious local charcuterie plate, but what really made the D'Hiver work this time was the gorgeous sunny day.

Last time I had the D'Hiver, it was a battleship-grey day with curtains of freezing rain sweeping across a sullen landscape of brown and browner. The effervescent, light and summery nature of the Saison seemed somehow out-of-place, like a a Viking in a sun-dress. Today though, Mother Nature smiled on my efforts to stop repeatedly pillaging her by rewarding me (and all #yyj peeps) with a sun-drenched hint of summer to come. Suddenly, the Viking was some flouncy Scandinavian princess, and the pigtails started making much more sense. What the hell am I talking about again? Oh right, beer.

Driftwood Brewing's Cuvee D'Hiver

Recommended if:

-Sexy Viking

-It's a summery day out

-You like a milder saison

Not Recommended if:

-Shave your legs, Snorri

-You want Deckhand-sized intensity

-It's raining. But then, it's Victoria after all. Just wait 5 minutes.

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.

YADBB Asks: What's Your Playoff Beer?

Am I a Canucks fan? Um, are they winning? Then yes.

Only joking.

But despite the fact that I've met a certain Finnish 'Nuck and found him to be a down-to-earth, regular sorta guy throughout our dealings, I wouldn't say I was a slavering, glass-eyed crazy hockey fan, up until we hit the playoffs and somebody feeds methamphetamines to the donkey pulling the band-wagon. Go Canucks Go!

But maybe you cheer for another team, and that's just fine. Except if it's the Leafs. Or (currently) the Blackhawks. Rooting for the hometeam in a pub crowded with like-minded fans is as much a part of the playoffs as is drinking copious amounts of beer while doing so.

Here's what's turning out to be my official 2011 Playoff Beer. It's a lager, quaffable and delicious. Not even slightly challenging by any means, but when you're standing at the bar for three periods (and maybe overtime) it's nice to have a swigging beer as a change from the hop-heavy IPAs and thundering Imperial Stouts. Not that I don't drink them with hockey too.

I'd sooner drink Zamboni leavings than touch a "lite" beer, but Lighthouse Lager is a nice solid drinker, especially when you can get it on tap. I'm sure the hop-heads will turn up their noses, but five pints of Fat Tug is a recipe for comically walking into a lampost while stumbling home.

Plus, sometimes you just want a lager. Sometimes you're in the mood for a beer that matches nicely with the opiate of the Canadian masses. I like to give bigger beers the full attention they deserve, or perhaps chat over 'em with a like-minded beerthusiast, but this beer ain't high-maintenance. It's perhaps a bit overly fizzy, but it doesn't have the cloying taste of a Molson or a Labatt product. It's just beer with a nice clean finish, and that's what I felt like today.

So Yet Another Damn Beer Blog wants to know: what do you usually pick out for the big game? Something new everytime, a constant favourite, something special out of the cellar, or just a pint of ol' reliable down at the local? Post it in the comments!

Hot Damn of the Week: Phillips Double Barrel Scotch Ale

'Twas with slavering visage and drooly appearance that I bounded into the Quadra location of @CascadiaLiq yesterday afternoon. Why so? Well, lads and lassies, I'd just been informed through the interwebby application known as "twitter" that a new Phillips seasonal firearm had just been released: t' double barrel.

Something I really love about Phillips is how often they put out their seasonals. Don't love the current crop of bombers? Just wait five minutes. It's exactly like Victoria's fast-forward bi-polar weather systems.

This brew was one I was eagerly a-waitin' to cycle through again. It's a Scotch Ale that's been barrelled twice, first in bourbon barrels out of the Jack Daniels distillery and then in red wine barrels (merlot and cab-sav). The result is delicious oaky overtones added to the sweet malt-bomb.

Take this as a compliment Phillips brewers, but if I were blind taste-testing this, I'd instantly know it was a Phillips product. It tastes the way the air outside their Government Street brewery smells. Which is a good thing.

The interesting thing here is how little oak there is in the nose: it's all a big wallop that smacks you in the palate on first sip. Big, cream-soda and caramel malts blend nicely with the woodiness and hide the slightly higher alcohol content.

Worth tracking down and sharing with a friend. Or you could poison it and give it to your mortal enemy. Ian.