One of Calgary premier microbreweries, Village Brewery recently celebrated its fifth birthday. Known well in Alberta for its popular brews like Village Squeeze, Blacksmith and Blonde, the brewery is also held in high regard for how involved it is in the local community. In the past five years, Jim Button and his team have donated to more than 1,200 events, contributed more than $400,000 back into the community, hosted 16 art exhibitions inside the Village tasting room, enlisted local artists to design their popular variety packs and helped initiate the Best of Calgary conference (with partners), plus other initiatives.

To properly celebrate the occasion, Village released the V Anniversary beer, a fermented golden Belgium Tripel in a beautiful, minimally-designed bottle. The brew has been over a year in the making, being brewed with fruity Belgian yeast, candy sugar and some hops before aging in a French oak bourbon barrel. There were only 200 of these 375-mL bottles available, all of which sold out shortly after the release after they were sent out last week. If anyone knows where we can get a little taste, I'm all ears!

With Big Rock Brewery also releasing some barrel-aged beers leading up to the holidays, it's safe to assume that Village (and Big Rock) will probably release other barrel-aged beers within the calendar year and other Alberta brewers to follow suit.