This post comes from Matt, the Beer Baron. You can find him on Twitter @geekcanuck
For St. Patrick’s Day, Ontario Craft
Brewers are encouraging beer lovers to support craft brewers by drinking local
stouts and seasonals. It is a noble and worthwhile goal but if you really
want to raise a special pint, you owe it to yourself to track down not just a
stout but one of Ontario’s amazing imperial stouts. Imperial stouts and Russian
Imperial Stouts take all the lovely, malted notes of stout and dial it up to 11
with even more depth of flavor, complexity and awesomeness.
Half the fun of craft beer is sharing and
the sense of community, so rather than just my own, personal preference for
imperial stouts, I rounded up a group of eight stout lovers from my local beer appreciation
group and decided that together, as a fellowship, we would find one stout
to rule them all.
In the hopes that you have a wonderful St.
Patrick’s Day full of delicious, Ontario-brewed imperial stouts this year and
beyond, we present our top-12* Ontario imperial stouts:
12. Grand River Brewing’s Russian Gun Imperial Stout 8.0% ABV
There are no losers in this competition and
Russian Gun’s No. 12 proves it. While it does mask its 8.0% ABV wonderfully
well, it just came across as more stout than imperial stout, especially against
the heavy hitters we gathered.
