The Best of 2018 - The Dark and Dirty

Only at the Collective Arts Brewing's Liquid Art Festival would you
see two guys from miles apart both descend on Hamilton wearing the
identical 'What Would Jesus Brew?' T-shirts made by Flying Monkeys
Brewing in Barrie! That would be my buddy, Hago, on the left and his
new friend, Sergei, on the right. The Beer Fest was, for my money, the
absolute best one thrown in 2018. The good news is it's coming back!
"So an Armenian and a Russian walk into a Beer Fest..." These guys.

Ever go to a Beer Fest on a beautiful sunny June day with over 50 different breweries from around the world, armed with some of the best IPAs you'll ever have in your life (and also other styles that I could have tried but didn't because of so many IPAs!) and then come away thinking, "Wow, watching all those artists was so cool..."

Wait... wut? Like beer artists? They make foam animals or some-shit? No, it was Collective Arts Brewing's (Hamilton) Liquid Art Fest back in June and dammit, Janet, it was some kinda fun. Barrie Beer Bro Hago came down for the day and jaysus, did we have a blast. Everything was there. All those beer kiosks, a couple of bands and art being done right before your eyes. All of the brewery's dull grey outer walls were slowly transformed into cool, wild Sci-Fi, psychedelic, funkadelic, crazy-ass scenes. Artists were up really high on scissor-lifts (with the appropriate safety harnesses, I'm sure - truth to tell, I didn't look because hell, I'm not the brewery's Safety Rep or with the Ministry of We Hate Fun).

I am standing in front of a wall that was gray 24 hours earlier. You
see, artists up on cranes worked over two days, putting up crazy
murals all over the outer walls of Collective Arts during the Fest.

Going in, I knew all this art was happening but didn't think I'd care. If that sounds sort of uncultured, it's because I am. I mean, come on, 50 different breweries from around the world, including Iceland and Japan? Really, shouldn't that be 100% of my focus??

But I kept finding myself drifting over to watch while I sipped my little hops bombs. I mean, when we first walked in, I noticed three different artists on the biggest wall, way up high, starting off. There were already tracings on the wall that had probably taken hours but at that point, it didn't look like much.

But by a third of the way down, they had me hooked and every time I got another beer, I walked over to see their progress. Gotta be honest, it was fascinating. And man, so colourful! And because I'm colourblind (red-green deficiency), I also saw it all differently than everyone else there! Well, except for the other 8% of the men there who are also colourblind. Now what was my point? Oh right. Liquid Art Fest is back again! Check their website and for crying out loud, GO!!! (Thank me later. It's that cool.)

So anyway, The Best of 2018 continues today with the third part, The Dark and Dirty (which is why I wanted a colourful start to this). That means your porters, your stouts... And then some oddball styles at the end to round it all up.

I enjoyed all three volumes of the Wellington
Brewing Re-Booted series this year but none
knocked me over more than Volume 5, which
was comprised of one standard and then three
newbies, the same as the other previous ones.

I'm sure you remember the rules. Ontario beers only, no repeat winners from my 2013-2017 Best Of lists and, of course, Glenn's old (but damn, that fogey from Oshawa brings me some tasty beverages!) So let's channel our inner Ramones on this mofo and ♫ Hey Ho! Let's Go! ♫

The Best Mixed Pack: There's always a lot of mixed packs on the LCBO shelves or Beer Stores, especially at Christmas time. But this year, Wellington Brewing (Guelph) had three of them out there over the year. Their Welly Re-booted Mix Pack Vol. 3, Vol. 4 and Vol. 5. They rebooted a lot this year. Rebooting left, right and centre. Wonder what that's all a-boot? Because it's Wellington, I'll always buy it. I mean, it's always one standard with three newbies thrown in the mix. It comes in old-school bottles. ("Before aluminum cans, class, beers were distributed to the public in glass containers. Glass was clear and made from sand.") And while I loved all three, it was Volume 5 that takes the Best Mixed Pack trophy today. You see, it had their Imperial Russian Stout, which is - and forever will be - an Ontario classic. Even if the other three were meh, there was always that stout. But the others weren't meh. The others were really great. The 5.2% Ice Eater Single Hop Chinook Pale, made from locally-sourced hops was a nice malt-pine mix.

Manantler Brewing's Death's Tar (you see what
they did there) That's No Moon, It's An Imperial
Black IPA is an unwieldy name, to be certain. But
damn, that's one dark, rich, hoppy treat, for sure!

I frikkin loved the 6.2% Candle Burner Coffee IPA, which had a great coffee-pineapple thing going and also combined my two favourite beverages. The Russian Imperial Stout was its usual immortal self. And the one I left for later (because isn't there always one left for later?) ended up quite surprising me. The 7% Spice Odyssey Chai Latte Stout was dark and delicious with cinnamon and ginger. I checked into it further on their website and found out it was brewed by all-women "Queen of Craft" crew, who hit the brewery a couple of times a year to brew up some sweet magic, with 25 cents from every bottle going to the Guelph-Wellington Women In Crisis. Well, that's a damn good cause so I figured I'd buy more of those when I was at Wellington on Friday. But alas, none were available. Anyway, great job, Welly's! (Previous winners: Nickel Brook's Mystery Pack, Muskoka's Winter Survival Pack 2016, Okanagan Springs' Craft Variety Pack 2015, Muskoka's Hoptorial Mix-Six)

Best Black IPA: Okay, no previous winners in this category because it's new. I'm not sure why because Great Lakes makes a great one. So does Nickel Brook. Same with Rainhard. But hey, here we are, making up the rules as we go.

FROM THE "I STAND CORRECTED" FILE
I said that Dominion City's Needless Luxury
Triple IPA was the only Ontario Triple IPA I
had ever had. Not true. This one, Great Lakes
and Amsterdam's Life Sentence Triple IPA
was not only my first, I awarded it way back
in 2015 in this very space. I'm a bad monkey.

It's anarchy in this little house of horrors. If you aren't tickled by the name of Manantler Brewing's (Bowmanville) Death's Tar: That's No Moon, It's An Imperial Black IPA, well, then, the taste alone will have to do it for you. Knowing Beer Bro Glenn was coming to visit me in Oakville, Manantler owner, Matt Allott, is always sure to set aside a couple of beauties for the pair of us and this Star Wars' themed beer, released May the 4th (of course) was a big, black 9.7%, 80-plus IBU bomb! Black IPAs, or at least one's done well, always give you the best of porters-stouts with the big coffee and chocolate mixed in with a west coast hoppiness that's a tough combo to beat. For starters, you taste the coffee and chocolate. But man, you smell the tropical fruit and citrus. A blend of two styles I absolutely love and like I said, when a Black IPA is done right, there ain't no beating it. Just a gem!

Best Porter: I am 99% certain I picked this beer up back when Beer Bro Glenn and I toured Hamilton back on a frigid February day. If not, it was shortly after because believe me, two small, just-opened west end breweries, Fairweather Brewing and Grain & Grit Small Batch Beers knocked us both for a loop. I returned to both (literally a minute apart) many times through the year. But here's the thing. The second I had Fairweather's Silky Oat Porter, I knew 2018's race for Best Porter was over. Oh sure, there's always a chance for another great one but really, it was no contest since that early year moment on, as far as I was concerned.

I have no idea whose photo this is except that they
have a very old-school stereo receiver in the back,
which is pretty bitchin'. My hard drive crashed so
I have been depending on my previously posted
Twitter pictures but could not find this one. Okay,
this here - best porter of the year hands-down!!

The label bills this beer as: Soft. Dark. Curious. Well, the oat malts certainly lend to the softness of the 5.5% beer. And yeah, it's deliciously dark. There's no doubt there. But rather than "curious", they should have gone with "smooth" because, man, this just rolls happily down your throat. Totally roasted malts on the nose, this has chocolate, a light whiff of coffee (less prominent than some porters but hey, it works beautifully here) and again, the oats are there on the back end. Even given my devotion to their fantastic High Grade American IPA, which got some very serious consideration here for IPA of the Year, this is the one I always looked for when I land at Fairweather. And when a brewery's porter beats their own IPA that I love? Well, that's a special kind of porter. And this was. (Previous winners: Forked River's Full City Coffee Porter, Innocente's Charcoal Porter, Highlander's Blacksmith Smoked Porter) 

Best Flavoured Porter: I create this category last year because I had so many delicious porters that, with the addition of other flavours, extended far beyond the traditional coffee-chocolate profile of the style and I wanted to give them props separately from the straight-up variety. This year's goes to our friends in Hanover at Maclean's Ales with the tweak on the regular style they simply called Cherry Porter.

Maclean's Ales in Hanover gave us all a fruity twist on the
classic chocolate-coffee profile of a porter with their Cherry
Porter. The cherry jumps out at your nose and tweaks this.

It's kinda funny because just prior to enjoying this 5.6% treat, I enjoyed another brewery's chocolate-cherry porter which I found had the subtlest cherry whiff. While the Maclean's itself refers to their Cherry Porter as having "subtle notes of sour cherry," I found them to be quite prominent and thought they added a lot to the brew, giving it a unique twist on a cold-weather classic. Hey, everyone tastes something different, yes? Forget finger-prints - I say no two people's taste-buds are alike. I thought this was a little beauty. (Previous winners: Big Rig's Tales From The Patch Pumpkin Porter, Mill St Vanilla Porter, Nickel Brook's Pissed Off Pete's Pumpkin Porter.)
Relevant Side-Bar: When Nickel Brook Brewmaster Ryan Morrow first created the Pissed Off Pete's Pumpkin Porter, a number of brewery employees were disappointed it wasn't a traditional Pumpkin Ale that year (thinking 2014 or 2015). As my hometown brewery at the time, I let them know my opinion by sampling it and then walking out with a sixer of bottles, making it clear that would not have happened with a (*ugh*) Pumpkin Ale.

My last beer of 2018 was one of my best beers of 2018. Collective Arts'
Imperial Porter was a fitting end to a fun-filled year. Heck, see the
intro to this and you'll realize this Hamilton brewery was a part of that.

Best Imperial Porter: A year consists of 365 days and that's why I wait until early the following year to do these little "Best Of" lists. Case in point. The very last beer I enjoyed in 2018, less than an hour away from the big midnight countdown was this one - Collective Arts' Imperial Porter. I wanted to end my year on a big note and as our old friend Drunk Polkaroo would say, this was one "big, boozy bastard." Call it an educated hunch but I suspected this might just land on the list. Found at an LCBO all by itself on a warm shelf and needing a worthy home, I properly aged this... in my fridge... for three whole weeks. I know, I know, my patience is unwavering. It's a curse, really. Okay, off the top, I caught lots of chocolate, a touch of vanilla but very little coffee, if any, off this one. You know what else I noticed? Bourbon and lots of it!

Town Brewery showed why they are an up-and-coming
force in the Durham Region, with their own takes on
across-the-board styles. And as much as I love their
hoppy stuff, this Leap of Faith Series' Foreign Extra
Stout was a step above most stouts I had this year.

Aged for over a year in Kentucky Bourbon barrel, this 11.5% black magic had so much boozy warmth going down, that I stepped out into the cold night air for just a moment to see if the bourbon in it was strong enough to warm me up. It, of course, didn't because that's the kind of dumb-ass experiment you'd only try if you've been drinking. And I had. Also I was wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt. But if you asked me what other beers I'd had on New Years' Eve 2018 (there were three or four before this), I would not be able to tell you. This is the only one I truly remember. Usually, it's the last beer of the night you forget. Not this time. Dawn of a New Year equalled Don with a Great Beer!

Best Stout: During our Whitby Craft Beer Invasion of December 2017, our last stop was Town Brewery. Most of us have only the haziest of recollections when it comes to the visit. The next morning wasn't much better as I woke up in my hotel room, trying to figure out whose beers was whose and sorting it all out with Beer Bro Glenn before skipping town. (Also, I scored him a free breakfast at my hotel. Good times!) In the end, I think I took a bag from Town that did not belong to me. However, it contained their Leap Of Faith Series: Foreign Extra Stout. 

When Durham Carpenter of the Year Josh brought these into the limo
during the Barrie Craft Brewery Invasion of December 2018, I thought,
"Perfect, an easy-sipping Chocolate Milk Stout." And the Brock St beer
was precisely that. Smooth and tasty, it's an extra-rich chocolate treat...

Now that poor beer languished in my fridge until early-December (so yes, a full year) until I held the one-person event known as Donny's Dark Weekend. (Actually, weekends but regardless...) It was one of the many stouts, porters and dark ales that finally came off the top shelf to be consumed. When I wrote a blog about the Dark Weekend, I intentionally left this out. I had it ear-marked for here, instead. The Leap of Faith Series was the first round of beers made by the brewery back in late-2017 so it's not like I've ever see this again. That's a shame but damn, this 6.6% brew had it all, plus a bit. Mixed in with the chocolate was a strong kick of licorice that I really loved. Even a year late, I suspect favour deepened over time. Gone but certainly not forgotten.

I visited Wellington Brewing in Guelph as part of the #IGBrewCrew that
made a British-Style Stout and saw the bottles of their Imperial Russian
Stout in the cooler, as well as 473-ml cans. Zup with that, I asked the
clerk, who noted there were left-over bottles from the Welly Re-Booted
Volume 5 so they were selling them off. Well, I walked out with a sixer.

(Previous winners: Lake of Bays' Nightwatcher Oatmeal Stout, Stonehammer's Oatmeal Coffee Stout, Stone City Ales' Ships In The Night Oatmeal Stout)

Best Flavoured Stout: Good old Josh Beaven always makes sure we have plenty to drink in the limo when we do one of our Craft Brewery Invasions. Granted, he gets a big assist from his pals at Brock St Brewing, who always hand him the limo beers but hey, it's Josh who hands me the beer so he gets the props. In 2017, during our Whitby brewery run, it was Brock St. Blonde Ale, a perfect easy ridin' brew. But last year, during the Barrie run, Brock St and Josh upped their game with the brewery's Blayne's Tank 5 Series' Chocolate Milk Stout.

Let's be honest here, people. Who among us can blame him?

And what exactly does this 5.5% brew taste like? Chocolate milk. Just like the kind you used to get at Mac's Milk when you were hung-over on micros. Once again, Brock St and our man, Josh, come through for us, making a fun day out a little bit tastier! (Previous winner: Muskoka's Raspbeery Coco Lait)

Best Imperial Stout: The only reason this beer hasn't won the title before is that I assumed it already had way back in 2013-2014. When I checked back and realized that I've never chosen this, my previous selection got, well, the boot, so to speak. As such, Wellington Brewing's (Guelph) Imperial Russian Stout gets the nod this go-round. No barrel-aging, no bourbon, no tricks up the sleeve, this is flat-out one of the best beers ever crafted in Ontario. With a hint of plum, this 8% dark chocolate-coffee gem goes down so smoothly that you can forget its high ABV at times. As I have a few times. Fortunately, your legs remind you very quickly. Like I said, this is a good as it gets.

Being as this was one of Manantler's most sought-after
beers of 2018, I feel fortunate that owner Matt Allott set
aside a couple for me and Beer Bro Glenn before they
were all snapped up. Geezuz, this was seriously fantastic!

Previous winners: Grand River's Russian Gun Imperial Stout, Nickel Brook's Kentucky Bastard, Walkerville's Barrel-Aged Milk Stout, Bellwoods' Hellwoods Imperial Stout)

Best Flavoured Imperial Stout: While a chocolate peanut butter stout from Ottawa's Whitewater Brewing was dividing drinkers into the pro and con camps very quickly (I never found it), I thought back to an early trip to Las Vegas last year and the best chocolate peanut butter stout I've ever had - Belching Beaver's (San Diego) Peanut Butter Milk Stout. I honestly never thought I'd find another in Ontario that could match it. I would be wrong, as I often am. Early in the year, Manantler Craft Brewing (Bowmanville) and Boshkung Brewing (Algonquin Highlands) pulled off the perfect "You got chocolate in my peanut butter" collaboration with their 8.5% All Shook Up Chocolate Peanut Butter Imperial Milkshake Stout. Imagine if you will, nature's most perfect health snack, a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but in liquid form. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. These two breweries absolutely nailed it!! (Previous winner: Highlander's Winter Imperial Stout)

Well, Scooby Doo Gang, that's it for the dark and dirty picks but I'll back back for The Best Of 2018: The People, The Places very soon to put a wrap on last year. Then, finally, I can jump into 2019 as a bunch of great stuff has already happened. Yes, Wellington, I'm looking at you! But that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...