Unibroue's La Fin du Monde (Awesome of the Day)

A few of my beer-geek friends were sitting around drinking beer (of course), and talking about some of our favorites. The question came up about which beer we choose if we could only have one beer for the rest of our lives. Being a malt-fiend, I chose some huge dark beer like St. Bernardus Abt. 12, but three folks—without hearing each other—independently came up with La Fin du Monde from Canadian brewer Unibroue. I thought that was an odd response, but I had one for the first time since that conversation—in Montreal with a giant plate of poutine, no less—and I get why they picked it.

La Fin du Monde is officially a “triple fermentation Golden Ale.” Like the best Belgian tripels, it’s a strong pale ale that perfectly blends malt and hops. It’s a big beer at 9% alc./vol., but not overpowering. It flavorful but not too spicy. It’s certainly not the very best beer in the world, but it would be hard to find one that better incorporates all the best things about beer. “This beer is brewed to honour of the great explorers, who believed they had reached the end of the world when they discovered America,” Unibroue says on their website. One could argue that after La Fin du Monde, there’s less of a need to keep searching for that desert island beer.

Josh Jackson is the editor-in-chief of Paste magazine and blogs daily about music, film and culture (and sometimes beer) at High Gravity. You can follow him on Twitter @joshjackson.