Phillips' Brewery's Longboat Double Chocolate Porter

I was excited to find so many dark beer in Canada, and in the middle of the summer! My next pint was this sweet smelling little number which came right down the street from where it was poured for me in Victoria, British Columbia. When you stick your nose into the glass, the festive smell of a See's Chocolate shop bubbles up into your nostrils; imagine sharing a oxygen chamber with a freshly unwrapped, slightly melted, dark chocolate bar and you'll be pretty close.

The brew passes your mouth with a bit of a fight, sizzling pleasantly, but quickly succumbing to your tongue.The texture then turns into a sort of milky cream that has a pleasant thickness to it, and a faint, bitterness filters through to your taste-buds.

The body of the beer seems to be Guinness inspired, as the tame flavor that teases you at the beginning of the experience fades into nothing. The brew then sits in your mouth, and unsure of what to do with it, you swallow it down with a twinge of disappointment: like a prostitute with a penis, the first impression was the best impression.

The porter then leaves behind a mild chocolate taste, almost as if it's apologizing for its non-performance.

Another lackluster beer that is worth a try, but it didn't sell me a second pint. Perhaps the cold of Canada is what makes the dark brews taste good? I don't know; The relative warmth of the summer sure did not.

Lighthouse Brewery's Keeper's Stout

As I was up in Canada for about five days, I had the opportunity to drink several Canadian beers. The coolness of the Great White North creates a many wondrous thing: the Northern Lights, a reason for owning a sweater in the the middle of July, and a populace that appreciates a dark brew year round. I'm a stout and porter man, so getting away the lager-sipping wusses of Nashville, Tennessee was a welcome change. I mean, if you walk into a store, and the only dark beer available is Guinness (i.e. the most overrated beer in the world), you have a problem.

While Canada offered up a selection of stouts, this first one by the Lighthouse Brewery out of Esquimalt, British Columbia was a lazy, subtle beer. The smell of the brew was light, smelling sort of like a wicker basket used to carry liquorice. It was difficult to put a finger on the scent due to its weakness.

Like a Guinness, the Keeper's Stout calmly slides into your mouth like flavorless milk. A sort of coffee taste attempts to assert itself, but it is quickly suppressed by the burn of delayed carbonation. It is almost as if flavor was a student uprising and the beer was Red China: a merciless repression of culture.

The beer slides down your gullet the same way it flows over your tongue: like a bored prostitute. But this time the milkiness leaves behind a gentle coffee flavor. Though tame and hardly memorable, it excites you because it is so much more interesting than the rest of the beer.

The Keeper's Stout is an okay beer. There is no reason to turn one down, or to try one if you never have. But you wont find much reason to grab a second pint of this lackluster brew.

Yazoo Brewery's Brewmaster's Hop Project

Nashville continues to be hot and humid, and I remind myself of a cold bottle of brew: My body is quickly covered by condensation as soon as I step outdoors and stand still. But there are many beers around that I've never seen before, and one of them is another one of Yazoo's. The Brewmater's Hop Project seems to be numbered based on its release, implying that no two batches are exactly the same.

I'm not sure what series the one I tried was, as there was no form of numbering system that I could see on the bottle. But I did notice a pleasantly tame citrus smell wafting out of the bottle after I popped the cap. It's a faint odor, and it really does not give a hint of the extreme flavor experience that is about to blast down your gaping orifice.

Even the first contact on your lips is deceiving, having what I like to call the Trojan Horse effect. There is an immediate dull, bitterness that lurks in the background of your taste perception, like Paris' misgivings about the equine gift the Greeks apparently left behind. You know, because nothing says "Sorry for ten years of invasion and butchery" like giant, wheeled horse made out of boat wood. I think that youngest son of Priam said something along the lines of "this is horseshit." The rest is history.

Anyway... as soon as that tame bitterness gets into your mouth, it explodes into frenzied activity.

Wait. I'm getting a sense of deja vu here. I'm pretty sure I've used this elaborate metaphor before.

Lemmie think. Uhh...

Like the humble HIV virus, the single bit of taste infiltrates your pallet, multiplies, and then bursts forth in extreme flavor! Your ability to resist strong hoppy deliciousness is quickly suppressed as even hardened foes of I.P.A.'s like myself are won over by the intensity and robustness of the beer's body.

Before you know it, your entire mouth is filled with hoppy flavor particles, and as the infection spreads, the background bitterness that welcomed the beer into your mouth grows steadily in strength.

Like AIDS, the taste never quite leaves you. Even twenty seconds after the gulp, your mouth will still be filled with a nice charcoal flavored buzz. An interesting ending to a beer that only seems interested in punching you in the face with one distinct flavor.

However, a beer that chooses to specialize in itself is definitely not a bad thing, and the Brewmaster's Hop Project is a good purchase for any fan of hoppy beers or I.P.A.'s. For those of us who generally avoid that flavor spectrum of beer, this Yazoo brew has just enough ale-ish thickness to satisfy. Find one, drink it, and you'll like it.

Yazoo Brewery's Hefeweizen

This next beer comes from a humble little brewery in Nashville, Tennessee.

When you open up a bottle of Yazoo, you first need to say "YAZOOO!" because it's fun.

Next: let your nose savor the the tangy banana scent of this almost clear, light-brown brew.

At this point, I too was excited to try this beer that claims to be a gold medal winner at the Great American Beer Fest in 2004. Yet judging by the content of the brew, the judges that year must not have been big fans of flavor.

To its credit, the beer instantly attacks your pallet with a refreshing acidic burn, and this experience continues until after you swallow. The body of the beer is hard to distinguish beyond this burning, but there is something a bit bitter hiding in there somewhere. It is nowhere near distinct enough to be given a specific label, however.

The aftertaste is tart, and has a real strong celery type flavor, much like Big Sky's Moose Drool. Yet celery is one of the least flavorful edibles on the face of the Earth, so that is not saying much.

Adding all these parts together and you are left with an entirely mediocre beer. If someone gives you one, there is no reason to turn it down. But if you are the one buying the beer, your money is best spent elsewhere; unless of course, your day is going spectacularly lackluster, and you want to keep the pattern going.