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With the Omicron skulking about this holiday, I thought we should start off the year with a recent beer release that is good and Radiant…
The Anaheim brewery is using the strong ale style as their winter warmer and I think the name is brilliant because we could use more people (myself included) being good.
Belgian Strong Ales are a great style but one that only pops up seemingly at random. Project Barley has recently released a dry hopped version that puts it all in a “bucket”, in this case a bomber bottle
14%. That is explained by aging a strong ale in Heaven Hill bourbon barrels for over 6 months. I haven’t had much from Sanctum Brewing Co. but thought this big beer would be a good re-introduction. And yeah, it has the typical and really nice bourbon aroma. I get coconut and wood and a bit of spirited heat to it. But the taste falls flat after that. The beer is reddish/brown with an expected thin head. The taste is sweet without going too overboard but then nothing else. That sweetness sticks and then there is a slight medicinal finish to it. There are supposed to be notes of vanilla, but they have left the bottle without a trace.
Love the name and label design but the beer needs another layer, vanilla may not have done it but might have helped.
This bottle is from quite a few years back. I was out beer shopping with my patient parents while I would trek from place to place looking for seasonals and other beers that I couldn’t get in SoCal. If I remember correctly, we were at Woodstock Deli when I picked out this winter release from Fort George. So a raise of the glass to my Dad who is probably scouring all the bakeries in heaven and to my mom who still takes me out beer shopping when I return home.
We have a gusher! Quick action saved pretty much the whole bottle but boy does that get the heart rate up. “North” pours a dark orange color. The first aroma that I get is an oak wood barrel note. I am also getting a little of the promised fruitcake. Mostly citrus and a touch of pineapple. First on the palate are notes of caramel and cola but what really amazes is how bubbly it is. Very bright for such an old beer. Then I get a bit of dark chocolate covered orange and more of the oak mix together pleasantly. And believe it or not, I think I am getting some hoppy bitterness at the very back end of the beer.
Verdict – I should have brought this up a couple Christmas’s ago. I believe that I would have gotten a bigger hit of fruit notes and more of that hoppy spice would have tied this together into more of a holiday fruitcake seasonal. But it did hold up incredibly well for a beer that was only 7.5%
We head to Washington State for a pirate themed Christmas Ale. And the best description of the beer can be found on the taproom blog
Nutcracker Ale is Boulevard’s holiday gift for real beer lovers. This hearty, warming brew is a classic winter ale, deep amber in color, with hints of molasses balanced by the “spiciness” of freshly harvested Chinook hops.
