Best Beers in the World?

If you know me well, you know that I love ratebeer.com. It's no secret. I rate, I trade, I drink, I share, I attend events and festivals, I organize tastings, and more. I'm a born and raised ticker. My wife knows not to go to a beer store with me unless she wants to waste more than the amount of time it'd take her to buy a pair of shoes (just kidding, honey... we both know I don't go with when you buy shoes). My friends know that when we go to a bar or restaurant I'll be sitting there on my phone annoyingly looking, sniffing, sipping, and rating away. I'll buy a new shitty pale lager from Burpslotsostan to rate when it's sitting among ten of my favorite brews. You get the point.

Being involved with ratebeer has made me a bit of a lucky man several times in my life, often with the help of a few friends. At festivals, tastings, and through trades, I have been lucky to try some of the best beers in the world. A recent tasting of one of them inspired this blog post.

On ratebeer, for about as long as I can remember, two beers have been tied for the top spot. One is Närke Kaggen! Stormaktsporter and the other is Westvleteren 12. For you morons that care about BeerAdvocate (note to self: future blog), as of this writing, Kaggen! is number eleven and Westy 12 is number one, just like ratebeer.

So what constitutes the world's best beer? Complexity? Balance? Rarity? Who knows. The old joke is that on ratebeer, all you have to do is brew a decent imperial stout and throw it in a barrel. Either that or make something super rare (I, for one, like quadruple imperial stouts aged with unicorn testicles inside of dragon-fire-breath charred rainforest wood barrels that aged a once-only bourbon whiskey for 100+ years - and the sour version is even better). Taking a look at the Top 50, one can't really argue with that mindset.

Speaking of rare, barrel-aged imperial stouts, let's begin with the Kaggen. It's a bit tough to find a ton of information about this beer. Närke has a website, but unless you're fluent in Swedish (Bork Bork Bork!), or have a lot of free time to fiddle with Google translate, it's not much help. According to BeerAdvocate, this beer is "the cask matured version of Stormaktsporter." Well, that's helpful. Viewing the BeerAdvocate descripition of regular Stormaktsporter, I deftly read "For the cask matured version of this beer, please do a search for Kaggen!" It's a never-ending circle of insanity. Starting to get my point?

Moving on, luckily ratebeer's description claims Kaggen! is an "imperial stout brewed with heather honey and aged on oak for 2.5 months." Phew. With the help of some friends, I was able to land two bottles (two different vintages) of this beer in a trade awhile back. Despite the teensy 6oz (or so) bottles, the description of this beer boasts "share the bottle," so we recently got together to taste this delight, and here is my full review:

"2009 Vintage - Opaque black pour with a frothy brown head that fades to a ring but sticks. Complex aroma of fudge, char, oak, bourbon, and a touch of alcohol. Wonderful flavor loaded with fudge, big smokey/char character, a lingering hint of coconut, definite oak, and more. Unique and quite good.

2008 Vintage - Opaque black pour with a small brown head that sticks. Huge BA (barrel-aged) aroma on this one with buttery vanilla, fudge, and more. Rich flavor displaying BA characteristics with lingering roast and a touch of ash."

My rating after considering both vintages was a 4.7/5, putting it at number sixteen in my list of current ratings. It's pretty awesome, and the ashy/char aspect makes it stand out as somewhat unique among the hundreds of impy stouts I've had, but I can't say it's the best beer I've ever had, that's for sure. I have some ratings stowed away for special occasions that I haven't put up yet either, so it'll go down the list some. All in all, I'd say it's probably within my top 25 beers. No unicorn testicles, but it's pretty good.

As for the Westy 12, we got some in this trade as well, but we drank it awhile back. I had already had it once before and I still have another bottle that I'm going to share with my brother in-law in two weeks (lucky bum). This beer isn't so mysterious. Their website is in English, there are multiple articles and Wikipedia entries about them, etc. Aside from being the top rated brew in the world on both major beer rating sites, it is also the only Trappist brewery not available in the US, making it the most elusive in most cases. The 12 is their abt/quadruple... I'll spare you that discussion, because if you're reading this blog, you probably already know what I'm talking about. If not, head here.

The Westy 12 is... damn tasty. Here is my full review, from the very first time I tried it, as I didn't edit my rating when I recently tasted it:

"The aroma hints of grapes and some dark fruits as well.  The flavor is grapes and dark fruits mixed with wonderful Belgian yeast characteristics - and no hotness whatsoever. This is delicious, well balanced, and very smooth.  The mouthfeel is amazingly soft and effervescent like real Champagne."

This is a simple, straightforward review, as I tend to do. I ended up giving it a 4.8/5 which currently lands it at number four on my list of ratings. It's getting closer... but I still wouldn't say it's the best beer I've ever had, or my favorite. My favorite part was that smooth, effervescent mouthfeel... very nice. Given the factors I mentioned above, I'd say it's definitely in my top ten favorite beers of all time. Monkalicious.

So, going back a few paragraphs... what constitutes the world's best beers? In my book, it's a combination of balance, complexity, and a certain hint of something unique that makes the beer stand out as an excellent brew or sets it apart from others. What makes these two beers so highly rated and so special, by my guess, is that even if they don't happen to be everyone's favorite beer, almost everyone will find them to be high quality and tasty, making their average ratings soar. This is opposed to other beers, say a Nutella Brown Ale, where some people will call it their favorite beer ever, and some people will call it their least favorite beer ever. It's kind of like how nobody actually listens to Mozart, and yet all of you know who that is. And, of course, we can't forget that certain sprinkling of rarity and elusiveness that makes the beer taste that much better when we sip it out of our fancy glasses.

A lot of you are probably saying, "Okay, tough guy, then what is your favorite beer?" Well, you can view my full list of ratings here (click "My Rating" to arrange by my score), but I can also just tell you that I've only ever given two beers a solid 5.0, and one of them I haven't put on ratebeer yet. The first you can see - Russian River Pliny the Younger - a tasty double IPA, which happens to be my favorite style. The other, which I haven't put online yet, is the definition of rare... so much so that it's even in the title... Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout... okay, so the rare thing is a bit tongue in cheek, but I happened to have loved that beer, and regular Bourbon County Stout was one of my first (and remains to be) favorite beers ever.

And, oddly enough, as of this writing, there is no listing for a Nutella beer, though I'm guessing it's what this one was hinting at.