Devil's Pale Ale 666

"THE DEVIL MADE ME BREW IT!" proclaims the tagline on the back of this novelty brew from Toronto's Great Lakes Brewery. This beer is apparently brewed with 666 kilograms of malt, 6.66 kilograms of hops, is boiled for 66.6 minutes and has a 6% abv. I recall trying this brew at Toronto's Festival of Beer after having been drawn to its Satanic imagery like a moth to a flame. Unfortunately, having already tried several dozen other beers I cannot recall what it tasted like. After spying the prominent 666 on the label at the local LCBO, I decided to pick one up for a formal review.

Both Burke and Erik had strong reservations about drinking this one. I popped the can and immediately noticed that describing the can's contents as pale would somewhat misleading, if not an outright lie. The brew is reminiscent of very dark porter with a thick head. Erik at this point wasn't sure if he wanted to drink it, but Burke (easily influenced by the evil in the can) declared we were all going to drink it. Burke and I raised our glasses and took a long pull. My palate was immediately assaulted by the strong, malty flavour which led to a pronounced bitterness in the finish. Burke stated that while he wouldn't think he would drink more than one or two of them, the flavour really wasn't worthy of the number of the beast. In fact, we further decided that the beer deserved to have been attributed to Purgatory rather than Old Scratch himself. Erik stated that it "tasted like crap" but that he had worse. Apparently, this one is more a novelty or something that might be popular with goths and metalheads rather than something that will find its way back into my fridge.