Walter Moar

I don't know if you've had Phillips Chocolate Porter, but you should be able to find at the specialty LDBs in Vancouver (it's obviously widely available on the island). They use chocolate to make it, so it actually tastes like chocolate, where I find that many other "chocolate" beers taste more like powdery cocoa.

Hugo's is actually not doing the renovations at this time, they are open for business as usual.

Some friends and I recently got together and grabbed a bunch of Beaujolais Nouveau to taste, just for the fun of it -- fun (and really good marketing) being what B-N seems to be all about. On the sly, I also grabbed a cru Morgon from Marcel Lapierre to throw into the blind bottles, just to see what would happen. Wow. I very happily realized that there is incredible cru Beaujolais out there at wonderfully low prices. At CAD $40 it isn't what I (personally) would call the "daily-drinker" range, but it was good enough that I ran down and grabbed the other bottle the shop had. I get the feeling that I'm going to end up drinking a bunch of cru Beaujolais, and that I'll be a happy, happy person.

Back in August, BonVivantNL mentioned the Scottish beer Innis & Gunn, and lamented the fact that it is not for export. The good news is that it is currently being exported, at least to British Columbia. One would assume that it will become more widespread in the future. It's a good beer; their claim to fame is 30 days aging in new American oak, and the result is a beer heavy in vanillins. I personally would say "too heavy", but it doesn't at all taste wooded in the way that a wine would. I'm sure that many people will love it, just tend to prefer hoppy ones like the Phillips Amnesiac that jtcookie mentioned.