From the brewery that brings you beer in a dead squirrel comes a new Christmas beer. Maybe.
Dog is for life, not just for Christmas. Or is it? http://www.twitpic.com/2c1x72 Playing with a Christmas beer concept. Good or bad idea?
But I bet it would taste pretty damn good, though. We’ll keep you updated.
Photo via Twitpic from @BrewDogJames on Twitter.
We're counting down to Christmas with 12 beers that resonate with the feel of the holiday. Some beers were nice; some beers were naughty. This is The 12 Beers of Christmas. Enjoy!
Brouwerij Slaapmutske in Melle, Belgium
So here we are at our final beer of Christmas. We wanted to make today’s review something special. We wanted to get a very fancy, very tasteful, very unique beer for our final day. Sadly, it turns out there’s a lot to do outside of blogging and writing about beers when December 25 starts to get close, so we had to settle for a beer from a brewery that we can’t even spell without copy-and-paste. Despite the fact that we can’t spell the Kerstmutske Christmas Nightcap name correctly, or even begin to get the Brouwerij Slaapmutske Brewery name right, the KCN brew was a nice, slow, and reserved finish to what has been a wonderful, tasty, and unexpected 12 Beers of Christmas.
The bottle says this is a Christmas nightcap of a beer. Now whether they’re referring to an actual nightcap, or the fact that this is a nightcap, or a play on both is unclear. However, with the flavors we encountered, this beer isn’t a night-ender, but is a smooth and enjoyable Belgian ale. The beer had a nice roasted applesauce, hazlenutty chocolate look to it, and the smell tickled the nose with the sweeter, boozy fruit scent we’re so accustomed to with these Christmas brews. The flavor was a little sharper and cleaner than some of the other Belgians we sampled, with a knife of burnt malty goodness cutting into the taste buds. The final notes hinted at some muted coffee moments, and further sips revealed a nice and light vanilla undertone. Nothing was dull or rough, just a smooth and silent take on a Belgian ale.
We’ve had a lot of fun going through these beers over the past week and a half. No, we didn’t love all that we came in contact with, but I really do encourage everyone to try something like The 12 Beers of Christmas on their own. We got a chance to try some beers outside our comfort zone and to learn about some breweries we never could have found before. We hope that your Christmas will be filled with great brews and warm memories. Have a safe and enjoyable Christmas. We hope Santa leaves some great beers underneath your tree.
We’ll be doing some lighter posting over the next week or so. I’m heading out to Michigan to visit my girlfriend and to soak in the wonderful tastes of Founders, Bell’s, and Jolly Pumpkin. Everyone else will be busy with friends and family. Check back tomorrow for our final beer of The 12 Beers of Christmas, and also check next week for some good stuff.
Until then, enjoy your holidays, everyone. We look forward to a great 2010 filled with new beers, new friends, and new memories.
Love and Cheers,
The BarBEERians
We're counting down to Christmas with 12 beers that resonate with the feel of the holiday. Some beers were nice; some beers were naughty. This is The 12 Beers of Christmas. Enjoy!
Kerkom Brewery in Belgium
Merry Christmas Eve! I hope you all have your shopping done, and if you don’t check out all the beers of Christmas (except that Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale) and jet down to the local beer store to get yourself those final stocking stuffers, or just a few more gifts to fill out under the tree. The delightful beer treat for today is the Winter King, more commonly known as Winterkoninkske. The brewers over at Kerkom Brewery are trying to bring hops back to Belgian brewing with this tasty winter ale.
he Kerkom brewery is a family operation built into a rambling farmhouse surrounded by Belgium’s best cherry orchards. Brewer Marc Limet, saddened by the gradually decreasing interest in hoppy traditional beers among Belgian breweries, has determined single-handedly to bring hops back into Belgian brewing.
Sounds pretty good huh? A fairly high octane (8.3 ABV) winter beer that departs from the typical malty sweetness and delves into the wonderful world of hops. The Winterkoninkske was clearly an unfiltered beer (if its been on the shelf for a while, you may consider leaving the last ounce in the bottom of the bottle) and poured a hazy, watered down coffee color. Steffen described it as the color of “light mud-water from the Red Rocks .” The dark brew gave off a “sniffy” of primarily alcohol, but with sweet vanilla notes as well as some hints of pear.
What a gorgeous place for a brewery!
This Belgian brew tasted about like you would expect from the nose. Strong enough to keep you warm at night with full tones of sweet fruit (i’m thinking pear or apple, definitely not citrus) and a small finish of bitter hops that lingers for a few seconds. Overall, the Winterkoninkske was a tasty enough beer, but as for bringing the hops back to Belgium? I think it fell a little short. After reading the description, I expected a fair punch of hops, nothing like an IPA or APA, but at least something to pucker up my lips for under that mistletoe. No such luck here guys! Would I drink it again? Yes, I could drink some more of this, but not at the five bucks a bottle it goes for in Helena.
If you’re like us, you know that wine and beer go equally well with a hearty holiday meal. I was prepped to write a guide about pairing some great brews with holiday meals, much like Miles did for Thanksgiving. However, Jay R. Brooks from one of my favorite newspapers, The San Jose Mercury News, beat me to it. I could do my own, but Brooks really did a great job about giving suggestions and reasons behind pairing. He even put into some of the beers I would have suggested selected. A little excerpt for his suggestion for ham is below, but really do check the whole thing out.
A glazed, baked ham is one of the most popular Christmas roasts, and one complemented by several very different beer styles. One of my personal favorites with ham is a Belgian-style golden, especially one that’s got some strength. Russian River Brewing’s Damnation is a great choice, as are North Coast Brewing’s Pranqster or Duvel Belgian Ale.
Other styles that work well with ham include dry Irish-style stout (Moylan’s Dragoons), pilsner (Trumer Pils), Märzen or Oktoberfest (San Jose’s Gordon Biersch or Davis’ Sudwerk), Helles (Kona Longboard Lager), English-style brown ale (Big Sky’s Moose Drool), or a strong winter ale (Full Sail Wassail).
The San Jose Mercury News — Brooks on Beer: Pairing Beer with the Holiday Meal
We're counting down to Christmas with 12 beers that resonate with the feel of the holiday. Some beers were nice; some beers were naughty. This is The 12 Beers of Christmas. Enjoy!
Ridgeway Brewing in South Stoke, England
Considering the price of energy these days, having a stocking packed with coal might not be a terrible present anymore. Nor would it be a terrible thing to have a Lump of Coal from Ridgeway Brewing show up in a number of boxes underneath the ol’ Christmas Tree, be it Heineken or standard BeerMas tree. Plus, this beer is one that pops up on everyone’s holiday beer list because of its iconic name and labeling. No Christmas would be complete without it. Especially ours.
Lump of Coal poured a really beautiful deep, thick red color that wasn’t sludgy or massively thick. The smell was hard to find even when digging your nose down into the glass. It was like there was nothing in it at all. Even after a tiny sip, the smell wasn’t instantly recognizable. The taste teased between a subtle bittersweet chocolate coffee front, and a roasted and nutty finish. I wanted a thicker stout than I got in Lump of Coal, and the 8% ABV really didn’t help. Just a trickle of alcohol filled the mouth near the end. The end notes really saved the stout, though, with the lasting flourishes of malt providing a lasting element to a rather subtle beer.
Maybe Lump of Coal is a pretty accurate name for this beer. It’s pretty cheerless; it doesn’t bring a huge smile to anyone’s face; and a seasoned stout drinker would be feeling pretty off about this one. However, for a person who wants to get into some darker beers that don’t feel dark, this might not be a bad choice. It might be a good stout for a Stouts 101 type class, but as a Christmas treat, stick with the chocolates and cookies.
I guess it was only a matter of time before some Real Man of Genius created a perfume out of beer. Because who wouldn’t love to smell like a drunk hobo?
Welcome to Seattle’s Blue Marble Energy, where chemists are cooking up a perfume made from the waste products of a local organic brewery.
“This is a viscous sludge,” said James Stephens. “It’s a mixture of about 50,000 different kinds of bacteria.”
Black sludge, rancid beer grains, green slimy stuff and it is all good for the Earth and for consumers. The grains replacing petroleum in the process making this perfume completely carbon neutral.
Unfortunately, despite the ingredients in the new “Eos” perfume, it does not smell like beer. But the local, handmade perfume by Sweet Anthem does smell nice, coming in both masculine and feminine versions.
Maybe it will smell nice. At least one guy in the article seems to be sold on the idea.
“Beerfume,” suggests one bargoer. “A lot of people like beer and a lot of people like women.”
Well put, guy. Might not be too late to get your lucky lady a sludge-based beauty product. Video after the jump.
Fox10tv.com – Perfume Made from Beer-waste Products
We're counting down to Christmas with 12 beers that resonate with the feel of the holiday. Some beers were nice; some beers were naughty. This is The 12 Beers of Christmas. Enjoy!
Pyramid Breweries in Portland, OR and Berkeley, CA
Occasionally on Christmas morning, you’ll get a present you remember forever. I think this feeling happens more when you’re younger, but it might happen when you get on in years, too. For me, the most memorable gift I received was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Thrower. 
Considering the fears of parents these days, the Pizza Thrower is a gift that couldn’t exist today. It shot chunks of plastic that were sort of pizza-esque at an alarming speed. Much too dangerous in this lawsuit age. I spent the next six months shooting the handful of pizzas at the family dog, along with Shredder, Bebop and Rocksteady action figures. After six months, though, you lose all the pizzas. When we moved out of our old house, we thought we’d find them lodged in the carpeting or hidden underneath our sofas. Nope. To this day, some house in the Helena valley has little pizzas in the walls, under the carpet, or maybe the dog just ate them and, well, I guess they’re in the yard somewhere then.
I bring up this story because great toys can be like good beers. Memories get attached to certain beers, and you remember right where you were the first time you had a sip. Not more than three days ago, I tried the Snow Cap Winter Warmer from Pyramid Breweries with a bunch of friends. Sure, I took notes about the appearance, scent, and taste, but as I sit here three days later, I hardly remember even touching the beer. It apparently had a rather nice, caramel-walnut color to it and smelled slightly sweet and a tad hoppy. The taste wasn’t terrible, either, with a nice malty finish near the end, with not much more than a light dusting of hops in the beginning. It wasn’t terribly strong, and the mouthfeel was quite watery, or so the notes read. I wrote that it was a relatively easy-drinking, winter warmer.
But really, with all of the other 12 Beers of Christmas, I have remembered something about them without the notes. Whether it was the Seriously Bad Elf’s florishes of booze, or whether it was the Winter’s Bourbon Cask Ale’s forced vanilla flavor, I remembered something. I’m not asking for Snow Cap Winter Warmer to be my Pizza Thrower of beers. I’m not sure I’ll ever find that one, but I remember something from every Christmas gift I opened in the morning. From the Drew Henson #7 Michigan football jersey my grandfather got me in 2000, to the radio-controlled motorcycle I got years before that, I remember something. And with Snow Cap, it’s like it never existed at all. Maybe it will make your Christmas sparkle and memorable, but for me, it was nothing more than a chocolate Santa candy you see at the store. It might be fine at the time but it’s nothing you’ll think about a few days later.
I don’t like Heineken. I just don’t like it. So when I saw this wonderful Christmas tree designed solely out of full Heineken bottles, I will openly admit it: I kind of like Heineken now. To look at. Not to drink.
But this year, Chinese designers decided to take an entirely different approach to celebrate the holiday, crafting a huge tree from 1,000 Heineken bottles. The massive sculpture is currently providing some festive flair to Nanjing Road in Shanghai, China.
You can check out the rest of the pictures of the tree after the jump. To us, though, nothing beats the BeerMas Tree idea.
Inhabitat — Christmas Tree Made from 1,000 Beer Bottles
