Best New Beers of 2014…Harbour Chocolate and Vanilla Imperial Stout

Following the initial nomination of Brew By Numbers Saison 01|08 Wai-iti & Lemon yesterday, the annual look back at the most memorable new British beers continues. There are five other places to fill in the list, and for the next choice, we head off on the long south-westerly journey from London to Cornwall. There, on a farm near Bodmin, you’ll find Harbour Brewing Company. In the spring, they delivered the best imperial stout I had all year…

Chocolate and Vanilla Imperial Stout (8.7%)
Harbour Brewing Co, Bodmin, Cornwall.
(keg/bottle, February)

It’s something of a testament to Harbour Brewing Co that they appeared on this ‘best of’ list last year as well – and for pretty much as different a beer as you can imagine. Their Aji Limon IPA changed the way I look at chilli beers (but not blog photos, it seems), and here they are again, featuring in the final six, twelve months later – to the very day. Although it says on the Harbour website that their Chocolate and Vanilla porter was ‘coming soon’ back in April 2013, I certainly didn’t see it until that particular year had crept off and we’d all swung recklessly into the current one, meaning it makes the cut.

Imperial stouts are – thankfully – readily available these days, and those with chocolate added are also fairly common. Throw vanilla into the mix and you’ll still find quite a few on the market – so what made Harbour’s effort stand out? For me, as ever, it was down to context – which in this case was down to the serve, and the fact that (not wishing to court controversy) it came from a keg. I love kegged beer – I love all beer; we all should – but darker imperials always seemed to lend themselves better to cask, or bottles, in my mind. Something about higher serving temperature and lower carbonation just makes these rich, savourable beers better, in my opinion.

Or, at least it did until I had Harbour’s Chocolate and Vanilla Imperial Stout. On keg at Edinburgh’s Hanging Bat, it was a real light-bulb moment. I mean, I know plenty of people love kegged stouts and imperial stouts – course they do – and that’s fine. But this beer, to me, was a revelation. Possibly due to its alcohol content (8.7%), and the fact that it had cacao nib upon cacao nib – they were added in the mash and then again in the conditioning tank, here alongside vanilla pods – meant it might have been overwhelming on cask. The raised carbonation gave a drier edge to these rich flavours, and gave the beer a fantastic balance – which is what we all really crave in the end, isn’t it?

Certainly when it comes to the top beers of the year, it is. Irrespective of that last paragraph, Harbour’s Chocolate and Vanilla Imperial Stout would very much have been an outstanding beer, however it was served up to me – cask, keg, bottle, policeman’s helmet. But making me re-consider my (mistaken?) belief that strong and dark can’t work on keg puts it in this year-ending list, without doubt.

Check back tomorrow for the third in this series of best new British beers of 2014, which hails from the equally great brewing county of North Yorkshire. Find out then what beer it is. Eddie, Rhys and the team at Harbour went one step further later in the year, releasing a Coffee, Chocolate and Vanilla Imperial Stout (which I never tried…)