Phillips Brewing Company Double Barrel Scotch Ale

Victoria, BC
$6 for 650ml bottle (7.7% abv)
www.phillipsbeer.com

In case you haven’t heard (almost impossible due to the brilliant buzz), May 10-16 is Vancouver Craft Beer Week – the inaugural edition of what is sure to be a hugely popular event.  With upwards of 25 local craft breweries and 20 venues participating in various dinners, tastings and mixers – plus a promise of ‘no crap beer’, how can it miss?

To honour VCBW, Drink will be profiling a couple of our local microbrews this week – hopefully introducing you to some revelatory tastes.  What these small boutique breweries lack in size, they make up for with sheer creativity and guts.  Being small also allows for greater flexibility and small run bottlings.  Like Double Barrel.  Phillips Brew Master/Blue Truck Driver/Sometime Still Builder/Blue Buck Buddy/All Around Nice Guy/Owner Matt Phillips put it like this: “We wanted to make a new beer and found a more expensive way to do it.”  The final sum was worth it here.  Take well-made Scotch ale.  Add an aging stint in Kentucky Bourbon barrels, and then a second layover into Okanagan Cab Sauv barrels.  The result?  A burnished red-copper hue with layered flavours of sultry caramel, vanilla, biscuit and gentle sweet peat notes with a bitter orange finish. I’m not one to drink warm beer, but more flavours and aromas presented themselves the longer the beer was swirled in the glass.  More Bourbony than winey – and lighter bodied than I expected – especially with all the obvious wood character.  Definitely different and edgy – ‘no crap beer’ here.  Innovative Matt Phillips once again shows why he is the best craft brewer in BC.

Rating:  (click here to see what our wine ratings mean)