Beer Spotlight!

Great Lakes Christmas Ale

$14.99 for the 12oz six-pack
Winter Warmer

This week, we continue our stroll through our holiday beers.

The Great Lakes Christmas Ale has been a holiday staple at our store for a number of years now. Over that time, it has floated to the top of a sea of American Winter Warmers. Let’s look at why …

For their Christmas Ale, Great Lakes steeps cinnamon and ginger in their base ale before adding honey into the mix. Although those are fine additional ingredients to add, what jingles our bells is that the resultant brew is one of the most balanced Christmas ales you’re likely to run into. Just a rooftop to the right of dry, it’s hard to tell where the spiciness stops and the hops begin, so well do they blend into each other. It’s like a younger version of an English Old Ale.

(By the way, If you’re tired of only reading about our holiday, we’ll be tasting a number of them at this week’s Thursday beer tasting! See you there?)



Results of the Monks vs. the Saints Taste Off!

At last week’s beer tasting, we pitted St. Bernardus non-Trappist-but-pretty-darn-close ales against actual Trappist ales of the same (or similar) styles. Here are the results from a selection size about 20 tasters …

  • Between the Dubbels, the Trappistes Rochefort 6 and the St. Bernardus Pater 6 … the Rochefort came down on the Pater 6 like the vengeful hand of God. It was overwhelmingly more popular.

  • In the world of Tripels, the Westmalle Tripel and the St. Bernardus Tripel pretty much held their own against each other (only a two vote margin between them — which, to be fair, is 10% of the selection pool, but still …)

  • And with the Chimay Grand Réserve vs. the St. Bernardus Abt 12, the Abt 12 left the monks in the dust!

Look for more taste offs in the future. (“It’s like a regular tasting, ‘cept you vote about it!)



Remember!

You can see our entire beer inventory on Untappd.com!