Cask - Soft peach and bready malts. Cloudy gold with a rich white head. Bitter and a bit muddy. Peach doesn’t really translate over the bitterness.

On tap at Doan's, pours a clear copper orange with a medium beige head. Aroma brings out toasted nuts, lots of amaretto and a ton of sugar. Flavour is extremely sweet, with toasted nuts, caramel, of course the amaretto liqueur, and brown sugar. Very sweet, in cloying territory. Fun beer, but it's pretty amateurish and too sweet for me.

Draught at the brewery
Amber color, clean. Mellow beer, sweetish, with light sweet almond flavor, almond milk; vanilla. hint of glue, very low bitterness.
The Altbier disappears; on the other side, as I come from the city of the original Amaretto and I know it well, I can confirm that this doesn’t taste at all like Amaretto, which gives me no desire to ever try or buy the product from Sons of Vancouver.
Boring sweet syrup.

Poured from the tap. Golden orange with white head. Dominant floral and pine hops with grainy rye malt and slight pepper.

Draught at the brewery
Dark brown color with small head. Aroma and flavor of roasted malts with a quite evident bready note which is very pleasant; the ashes are not too evident, it has a small amount of fruity esters, it’s lean and very dry; in some places this could go as a roasty Dunkel. Nice.

On tap at Doan's, pours a deep dark mahogany with a medium beige head. Aroma brings out toasted malt, some crusty rye bread and a touch of caramel. Flavour is nicely and lightly sweet, with toasted caramel, moderate roasted malt and bready notes. Doesn't strike me as a shwarzbier really, but it's pretty pleasant for what it is.

Dark amber, with a medium head. On the nose, a mix of brighter orange and pear notes with a more earthy, c-hop underpinning. It’s the same on the palate...a fair bit of bright orange, some orchard fruits, but also the piney, more resiny old school centennial (or whatever it is) character. Quite bitter. The malts are as you’d expect given the colour - some light crystal malt, more crackery, ryvita sort of character. To me, that really does push the envelope of acceptability on chewiness - that envelope has changed a lot in the past few years. This would have been an eye-opener in 2008, but today it’s kind of like, "why don’t they just brighten it up a bit, lighten those malts and switch up the c hops for something fruitier."

Nearly black with a light head. This is quite toasty on the nose, porterish, and the rye shows a fair bit. Very toasty, lots of rye with a nice porterish, with a really nice chocolate character. On paper, 53 IBUs is a good number but on the palate I’m thinking it’s not enough...apparent bitterness is less. But this is one of the better local stouts.

Dull tan, no head. Heavy toasty rye character...good bitterness...I like this. Good session brew that calls back 90s pale without being boring or derivative.

Bottle. I like how it says "Ale" on the label. Dark brown colour. Medium, bubbly head. The aroma is fudgey, bit of chocolate. On the palate, the body is decent. Again, a fudgey/chocolatey sort of character. Moderate bitterness. No roast or any of that. The malts don’t bring a ton of developed sugars, which is probably it’s biggest weakness.