It’s St. Patrick’s Day eve!
The annual holiday takes place Sunday and it’s of great cultural importance in Ireland, but for many it’s simply an excuse to have a few drinks.
Guinness is typically the beer of choice on St. Paddy’s, or a cheap lager with green dye in it, but some may be looking to get into the spirit while enjoying some of British Columbia’s finest craft beer.
That’s entirely possible thanks to some incredible, award-winning dark beers that are produced at BC breweries.
This week’s column won’t focus on a single beer, but rather six that can be a nice substitute for Guinness if you decide to indulge in a couple of pints on Sunday.
You’ll find five stouts and one mysterious option (I’ll explain later) on this list and you should be able to find at least a couple of these at your local craft-focused liquor store.
Container Brewing - All Season Dry Nitro Stout
Many stouts are seasonal beers, but that’s not the case at Container Brewing in Vancouver. This modern dry stout is light, crisp, dark and mysterious, the brewery says, and it’s nitrogen dosed, which means it will feel just like a Guinness when it hits your lips!
Persephone Brewing - Dry Irish Stout
This stout from Persephone Brewing in beautiful Gibsons on the Sunshine Coast is another nitrogenated beer, which gives it a smooth texture. The brewery says to expect coffee-like aroma with undertones of freshly-baked oatmeal cookies and toast with a subtle bitterness.
Crannóg Ales and Left Fields - Backhand of God Stout
This popular beer comes from Canada’s first certified organic farmhouse microbrewery in Sorrento, BC. It’s been around for a quarter century and is powerful in flavour, but easy to drink. It’s smooth and mildly-hopped with a distinct presence of coffee and chocolate.
Tofino Brewing - Kelp Stout
It may not sound like the most appetizing option, but this Tofino Brewing staple is very sought after. While brewed with locally-harvested kelp, the brown algae from the Pacific Ocean simply balances with the dark-roasted malts to give a taste like you’d expect from salted dark chocolate.
Hoyne Brewing - Finnegans Irish Stout
This seasonal creation is a tribute to the writings of James Joyce and Hoyne Brewing touts it as a complex, deep beer with savoury rich flavours. If your favourite part of Guinness is that it’s a lighter dark beer, the Finnegans Irish Stout may be the choice for you.
Hoyne Brewing - Dark Matter
We’re double dipping with another Hoyne Brewing creation, but this one is certainly not seasonal. It’s one of the more famous BC craft beers and it’s the mysterious option I previously alluded to, and I’ll let the brewery explain why.
“Dark Matter is the only beer we make where we don’t say on the bottle what style it is. This is for a very good reason. Even we don’t know! It is more easily described by what it isn’t. It is not as roasted as a stout, nor is it as sweet or high in alcohol as a porter. And don’t even mention brown ale in the same breath. Like the Northern Lights, it is seductively elusive, bringing the mystery of the universe into your glass.”
Josh Duncan is the NowMedia news director and a craft beer lover. Reach him at [email protected]. His beer column appears every Saturday afternoon in this space.
