Time usually mellows a beer that's strong enough to cellar, so I was encouraged by Central Waters' claim that their Y2K barleywine—more properly called Kosmyk Charlie's Y2K Catastrophe Ale and "originally designed for the Y2K survival kit," whatever that means—is aged for a year before it reaches the drinking public.

Plus I already had a few good reasons to trust Central Waters: not just La Petite Mort, the bourbon-barreled weizenbock they brew with Local Option, but also their excellent bourbon-barrel stout. Kosmyk Charlie's isn't aged in bourbon barrels except in special cases (and this isn't one of those), but it's clearly a much prized adult beverage: even at four bucks for a 12-ounce bottle, it was sold out at both Binny's outlets I visited this past weekend. Speaking of Local Option, though, they'll have it on tap at their Al Capone-themed beer event this Friday, January 25. (You should also try the De Dolle Stille Nacht 2011, the Emelisse Triple IPA, and the Local Option Kentucky Common aged in Templeton Rye barrels. At least. And don't try to drive.)

• Jourdon Gullett's artwork for Ravaged by Vikings

Luckily I found a douple IPA called Ravaged by Vikings, from a newish Naperville brewery called Solemn Oath that distributes its beer exclusively on tap. It's the big brother of Kidnapped by Vikings, one of the first Solemn Oath releases upon its opening in May 2012. Ravaged by Vikings has been around since late fall, assuming that the dates of its online reviews at Beer Advocate can be trusted.

To get an idea how hyped Westvleteren XII is, all you have to do is consult the Internet's two most popular beer-rating sites, Beer Advocate and RateBeer. By aggregating their millions of user ratings, they've compiled lists of the best-loved beers in the world; on the former, it's in second place, and the latter has it squarely in first. Westvleteren XII has been first at Beer Advocate for much of the six years or so I've been consulting the site, but it's currently displaced by Russian River's Pliny the Younger.

You might already recognize the Spiteful logo, because Shaffer worked as a bike messenger for much of the past two years and plastered the brewery's stickers all over town during his rounds. But the G.F.Y. Stout, their first commercially available beer, didn't arrive on store shelves till December 5—it's now available at a bunch of Binny's locations, Fischman Liquors, and Capones Liquor. I paid nine bucks for mine. Follow Spiteful on Twitter for updates on releases and locations.

Shaffer and Klein also have a Christmas ale in the works, for which they juiced four pounds of ginger by hand. I don't generally care much for holiday beers, unless they're Belgian—I don't get why the Great Lakes Christmas Ale has a cult following, for instance—but that detail about the ginger has piqued my curiosity. Powdered ginger just makes me think of cookies, but the fresh stuff can have a real bite.

Besides, Pipeworks has shipped at least 26 varieties of beer since starting production in late February. On account of I need decent pictures and plenty of notes for these posts, I'm effectively restricted to beers in bottles (as opposed to on tap only) so I can review them at home, and I've got to find one worth talking about pretty much every week. An extravagant rate of innovation like that provides a lot of low-hanging fruit.

Heavier Handed contains 8.1 percent alcohol, compared to 6.7 percent for its little brother, and it's aged in what Two Brothers calls French oak foudres. A foudre, if the Internet is to be believed, is a great stonking barrel or vat of unspecified size, historically used in parts of France for aging beer or (more commonly) wine. The word apparently also means "lightning" in French, so go figure.

Perhaps counterintuitively, harvest ales can't compete with the intense hop flavors found in especially aggressive beers made with the dried variety. I'll make a semieducated guess and compare the use of fresh hops in brewing to the substitution of fresh herbs for dried in cooking—in my experience it can take a fistful of green leaves to do the job of a tablespoon of dried. Maybe using fresh hops requires a volume so much larger than normal that you reach a practical upper limit sooner. I'm sure any actual brewers reading could clear this up in the comments.

Perennial got my attention this summer with Fantastic Voyage (a strong milk stout made with coconut) and an excellent peach Berliner weisse. So in late October I picked up a bottle of the Heart of Gold wheat wine when the 2012 batch (the second overall and first with this label) hit stores. Heart of Gold won a silver medal in "Other Strong Beer" at last month's Great American Beer Festival in Denver. There were 55 entries in that category, one of 84 at the festival; the gold went to Boulevard's Reverb Imperial Pilsner, in a good showing for Missouri.

Wheat wine is a newish style, having arisen in America (probably California) at some point in the past three or four decades. (Home brewers are almost certainly responsible, which makes it difficult to be precise.) It's about as strong as the comparatively ancient barleywine style—Heart of Gold is 10 percent alcohol, at the low end of the typical range—but wheat malt accounts for more than half of its grain bill.