Best of 2015: The tastiest five beers of the year

By David Obuchowski

Before we get into the five bests beers I drank in 2015, I have to tell you about the two places where, collectively, I consumed four of those beers.

Dark Lord is a Russian imperial stout (my favorite kind of beer) that is released and sold only one day a year. 3 Floyds Brewing Company in Munster, Indiana, uses the release day as an occasion to throw a small party, and by small party I mean a 12,000-person music and beer festival.

My band, Publicist UK, was fortunate enough to perform at the Dark Lord Day release party this year alongside Kylesa, Pallbearer, Obituary, Corrosion of Conformity, and Big Freedia. To be clear, I could have drank the most disgusting swill on the planet and I’d have been nothing short of completely delighted to play with those acts. But in addition to sharing the stage with great bands, I drank not one, but two, of the best beers I had in all of 2015. It was a good day. Despite the fact that it was freezing, pouring rain, and I think I got trenchfoot, it was a great day nonetheless.

The second place where I managed to have two of the best beers of the year in a span of a couple hours was, not surprisingly, the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), held annually in Denver, Colorado.

In September I covered GABF for Gawker Media’s Deadspin. The assignment was simple: highlight one beer from each state. Since it would have been lame to only drink one beer from each state, I thought I should at least drink four or five beers from each state (plus DC) and then highlight my favorite of the bunch. That’s a lot of beer, and in some ways it wasn’t nearly as fun as you’d think, trying to take notes and rush around to 250 different booths and wait in line all in the span of five hours.

Of course, it’s tough to complain about a job that requires you to drink beer. Considering I had countless great beers, and two easily make my top five of 2015 list, I’d have to say that I’m very glad I accepted their challenge.

On to the list of individual beers, and there’s no particular order here. These beers are all pretty much perfection in my book.

Dark Lord, 3 Floyds Brewing Co.

Since imperial stouts are my favorite beer (by a longshot), Dark Lord has always been extremely high on my list of beers I’d wanted to drink. It was also a beer that was very much in danger of falling short of my expectations. It’s such a rare and sought-after beer, that it has a bit of a mythical quality about it. But this beer is special. And what makes it special goes far beyond its rarity, or the raging festival around it.

Imperial stouts are sometimes compared to motor oil in how thick and dark they are. But for the most part, that’s just a playful simile. In the case of Dark Lord though, there’s some truth to it. The day I drank it, it was a frigid spring day and it was pouring rain. As I was walking with a glass of the stuff through a muddy field, my foot sunk in the ground and some of the beer sloshed onto my thumb. It stained my skin the way iodine does.

This beer registers an ABV north of 15 per cent, and is a beast. Brewed with coffee, vanilla, and molasses, it’s a sugar bomb. Dark fruits feature nicely in the flavor, and so does the heat from the alcohol.

I love this beer for the same reasons I love brutal music. It’s just all-in and over the top. It’s an enormous beer that lives up to its name, as one of the dark lords of imperial stouts.

Dripa: Double Rice IPA, Kuhnhenn Brewing

As the event crew got the stage and equipment set up in the torrential rain, our band huddled in our tents and fashioned full-body suits out of garbage bags so that we could get out and eventually do some exploring. While this was going on, I only had one thing on my mind: drinking Dark Lord.

Instead, someone put a growler in front of me that had this written on the cap: DRIPA. Our drummer said, “Oh man, DRIPA? You gotta try this.” I asked what it is, and he said,“Double Rice IPA. DRIPA”

I like some IPAs, but I generally define myself as “not an IPA guy.” But I’m not one to turn down a beer that’s being generously offered. Seeing as I had no Dark Lord in my cup, I did the sensible thing, and I poured a glass of DRIPA.

Absolutely astonishing. Its ABV is north of 9 per cent, and the hops are pungent to say the least. But the rice it’s brewed with cut through, giving this otherwise rich beer, a dry and refreshing finish and flavor. It’s a perfectly executed balancing act between the heat of the alcohol, the sticky and bitter aromatics of the hops, and the crisp bite of rice.

To say it’s the best IPA I’ve ever had would be accurate, but it would be not giving the beer its due credit. Regardless of its classification, DRIPA by Kuhnhenn was one of the best five beers I drank in 2015.

Snake Cake, West Sixth Brewing

As I’ve mentioned, I love stouts, and since I was in the presence of 750 breweries at GABF with almost 4,000 beers and am at least slightly self-aware, I knew that if I let myself, I could go on a binge and drink 250 imperial stouts. I had a feeling my editor at Deadspin wasn’t looking for me to turn in a list of 250 stouts, and I did my best to vary it.

That said, I’m only human. I had to indulge here and there.

When I was drinking beers from Kentucky, I hit up the booth of West Sixth Brewery. As I understand it, they’re a very well-known brewery in their region. But I live in Colorado now, and their beer is not distributed out here, so I was new to them. I was also intrigued by a beer they were offering called Snake Cake. An employee of West Sixth explained that it was a bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout brewed with vanilla and chocolate. It was made to celebrate the brewery’s third birthday.

This was one of the most decadent beers I’ve ever tasted. The best way to describe it is this: imagine a chocolatey, vanilla cake with marshmallow and coffee notes. Now imagine it as a liquid. Now imagine aging that liquid in bourbon barrels. Now imagine that liquid is 11 per cent ABV. Snake Cake: it’s truly the closest thing I’ve ever had to drinking a big, boozy, liquid, bourbon barrel-aged cake. The fact that it came from a brewery I wasn’t even remotely familiar with added an element of unexpectedness to the decadence, which made it even more enjoyable.

Oscillate Wildly, Strangeways Brewing

There was a lot that drew me to the Strangeways Brewing booth at GABF. One was Strangeways Brewing is named after The Smiths album Strangeways, Here We Come (which, by the way, happens to feature one of my favourite Smiths deep cuts: “Unhappy Birthday”). The second was Strangeways is out of Richmond, VA, a city that’s seriously threatening to dethrone craft-beer capitols like Boulder, Denver, Portland, and the entire state of California. Go to Richmond and visit Strangeways, Hardywood Park, and The Answer and tell me I’m wrong. I’m not wrong. The final reason I was intrigued by Strangeways was I had some trusted sources tell me I couldn’t pass up that brewery at GABF.

Despite my “don’t drink too many stouts” rule, I approached the booth and asked for a stout. (It was also the first booth I went to, which should give you a good indication of my will power.) But, they didn’t have any. Instead, they gave me a sampling of what they did have, which (aside from two: a stingo and eisbock) were wild ales, a variety I appreciate more than I love.

Among them a blueberry sour ale called Oscillate Wildly (another Smiths reference). This beer is a very friendly assault on the senses. Before it even hits your tongue, the nose will trick you into thinking this will be a mouth-puckering sour. But instead of going full-on sour, it’s pleasantly tart, awesomely earthy, and it packs an explosion of blueberry. Yes, the beer is delicious, and yes I found it to be absurdly enjoyable. But more than those measures, I can crown this beer as being, hands-down, the most memorable beer I had all year.

90 Shilling, Odell Brewing Co.

I could probably name another 10 or 15 beers that I’d rate five out of five stars, but they would be similar to Dark Lord or Snake Cake in either their flavor or relative rarity. The fact is, aside from maybe the DRIPA, the beers on this list are not ones you’re going to be reaching for any or every day after work. They’re either too rare, too expensive, or both. I wanted to include a more common, accessible beer. A beer that I bought a lot of this year, just so my wife and I could have it in the house and grab one whenever we’re thirsty.

If I were going by brewery, I’d probably have to dedicated this spot to Ballast Point, who’s currently putting out so many consistently high-quality beers, it’s a little baffling. I can’t tell you how many six packs of Victory at Sea, Calm Before the Storm, Calico, Sculpin, Grapefruit Sculpin and Habanero Sculpin I bought this year. But we’ve already talked about the sweet vanilla goodness that a beer can bring (Snake Cake), and we’ve already talked about how out-of-this-world good an IPA can be (DRIPA). And, plus, this isn’t about the five best breweries, it’s about the five best beers I had all year.

After much preamble, I give the honour to 90 Shilling from Odell. A lot of people will talk about the one beer that got them into craft beer. For a lot of folks, it’s Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale, or Widmer’s Hefeweizen, Anchor Steam, and so on. For me, the beer that made me fall in love with craft beer was 90 Shilling. I can actually still remember drinking my first pint of it, and telling my then-girlfriend (now-wife), “I don’t want to drink Budweiser ever again.” It’s not like I hadn’t had craft beer before, but 90 Shilling was, and continues to be, such a subtly perfect beer.

Amidst 10+ per cent ABV imperial stouts, barrel-aged beers, wild sours, and other assorted (and awesome) varieties of beer (hell, I even had a beer brewed with yeast that went up in space), it’s easy to take something like 90 Shilling for granted. Regardless of how ambitious and adventurous I’ve become in my beer consumption, the fact is I still buy 90 Shilling by the 12-pack every two or three weeks. When we have guests over, whether they are craft beer fanatics or completely ambivalent, the 90 Shilling goes at an astonishing rate. It’s a beer that almost everyone loves. It’s just a simple but perfectly well-made beer.
And for that, it certainly has earned a place in my list of the five best beers I had in 2015.

David Obuchowski plays guitar in Publicist UK, whose debut album Forgive Yourself was released this past summer on Relapse Records. He also plays guitar and sings in Goes Cube and Distant Correspondent. A freelance writer as well, his articles have appeared in Gawker, The Daily Beast, and he’s had numerous beer-related features in Deadspin.