Spirit Lifting Porter

The weather outside is frightful, but my beer is sooooo delightful.  Unfortunately it took a miserable run in the rain, slush & snow before I was allowed to indulge in my beer of the week.

When you are restraining yourself to a single beer per week, you have to be very careful about the choices you make.  Quality is essential.  Something to suit your mood is critical.  In other words, this selection is the biggest decision you will make all week.  Nothing less than perfection is acceptable.

As I staggered back into my cozy apartment, shivering uncontrollably, my overly long winter running leggings sodden and wrapped around my squelching sneakers, I fantasized about my Weekly Beer.  What should I choose?  What could possibly make up for the horrific calf cramping, icicle knees and frozen hamstrings that I was experiencing?  What beer could sooth my chattering jaw, release my clenched fists and ease me into the evening?  What beer indeed?

To tell the truth, it would require an army of darkness and demons to drag me back out into the cold and to the liquor store.  I had to choose from my cellar selection (in this context, “cellar” means the rubbermaid bin of booze in my closet).  An IPA would just have too much get-up-and-go for my present state.  A hefeweizen would be seriously lacking in the comfort department.  The lager was right out.  Even my pride and joy, my own homebrew that I would swear is the perfect beverage for almost any occasion, would not quite cut it tonight.  No, it had to be the porter.  And not just any porter… a coffee porter.

R&B Brewing’s Spirit Chaser Coffee Porter is perfection incarnate.  I am so confident in that statement, that I will stand by it even when my legs aren’t in spasm and I’m not dizzy from over-exertion.  Like most porters, this one delivers a wonderful chocolate flavour, but then R&B kicks it up a notch in the decadence department by including a rich, aromatic coffee to the brew.  The coffee used is a direct trade number from the Aceh region of Indonesia.  And brought to us in an ethical manner no less,  by Salt Spring Coffee.

According to R&B’s site, the name ‘Spirit Chaser’ is in reference to a wooden totem used to ward off evil spirits from harming sleeping beauties.  Here’s hoping this Weekly Beer protects me from sprains, strains, hypothermia and other hazards of running like an idiot in the snow.