Winter Warmer - Garrison Brewing (Canada - Nova Scotia - Halifax)

Winter Warmer - Garrison Brewing (Canada - Nova Scotia - Halifax) 6.5%

Smells roasty, sticky and like caramel. A dark amber in a glass, a little like burnished wood. Very strong flavour, sweet with a somewhat floral spicy punch and fairly bitter with cloves but also with a hops flavour that is ever so slightly (and pleasantly) green.

Not an ale for the faint of heart but perfect for a curling up with during a dark winter's night. Would be a great drink to serve at any Yule, Christmas or New Years Eve party and would also make a great stocking stuffer for that beer lover on your list.

Truly a great winter style beer, I'm not surprised at all it brought home a Silver Canadian Brewing Award in 2009.

1664 Blanc (France - Strasbourg)

1664 Blanc (France - Strasbourg) 5.0%

This wheat beer is flavoured with plenty of extra additives including just plain old glucose syrup. However at first blush the colour is right, cloudy and a white gold; its aroma is a fun appetizing mix of grapefruit, other citrus fruits and a passion-fruitlike smell that may be from a mix of citrus and coriander wheats are known for. The flavour is actually quite nice, it's fruity like the aroma, there is malted wheat as well as bitterness (it is a real beer after all) and spice in there too.

I can imagine drinking a lot of these would result in a splitting headache the next day (especially since it's 5.0% rather than nearly all of the other flavoured beers out there) but these would be great on a patio in the summertime. It's also a beer that non-beer drinkers could enjoy.

A really cool blue glass bottle and a stylish, though simple, bottlecap. This one is definitely worth a try, hopefully it doesn't get pulled for being released in the winter when it would be better suited for the summer.

Orval Trappist Ale (Belgium)

Orval Trappist Ale (Belgium) 6.9%

The first one I tried was VERY bubbly - probably because I served it right out of the fridge instead of at 12 to 14 degrees Celsius as they directed: word of warning!

The second was very bitter, spicy, sweet, floral with some wood tones: this is a beer that won't go unnoticed. This is much as I expected from a Trappist ale though I do find it to be more bitter than some of the other Trappist ales I have tried. A fun, exciting and exotic beer to try for anyone interested in a taste adventure.

A cloudy orange amber colour in a glass. Trappist ales always cloudy with natural sediment because they are bottle fermented.

Also of note, this beer has a "bottled on" date and a "best before" date - five years later! Like many Trappist ales this one can be aged essentially like wine.

A Beer From Ontario & One From Norway

Creemore Springs Premium Lager (Canada - Ontario - Creemore) 5.0%

This lager is malty and sweet, a little bit skunky, and is amber in a glass.

A very smooth pleasant taste with a bit of bitterness.

Frydenlung Bayerol (Norway) 4.5%

A brownish red in a glass, this beer is smoky and malty. And fairly bitter. It's a nice mix and darker tasting than I had expected. Hints of black licorice and oak.

Kingfisher (India) 4.8%

Very pale gold. Malty, bitter and little bit skunky: very lightly flavoured. This bottle might have been a little stale. Regardless, the beer is really quite bland so it is easy to drink but not palate cleansing-ly refreshing per se.

But on the plus side Kingfisher is from India and has a beautiful bottlecap.