Back to the blog and rolling along with bock season! Thank you so much for bearing with me while I took February off; between our baby, Michelle working hard on a new project, and a new job I'm still settling into, it's getting tough to find space to write about beer. Taking February was the right call for me. 

Today, we're hitting the ground running on this cold yet still spring-like late-winter day with a beer that perfectly encapsulates the changing seasons, a style I eagerly anticipate the whole winter long. That's right; we're doing a bock.

I'll say here that I only have two bocks slated for review this month. A stroll through the shelves at my local bottle shop this afternoon showed that breweries are more focused on fad-like brews (which isn't a dig--I love fad beers!) than sticking with this tried and true seasonal. Luckily, one of the breweries adhering to this malty tradition is MadTree, who canned Guten Bock this year. Let's get to it.

Two things: 1) You really didn't think I'd let the entire month of January slip away without providing a proper post, did you? 2) Did I really go through all of 2022 without discussing a single MadTree beer on the blog?

Good for all of us, then, that I have a remedy for both those things. Here in the bleak, chilly late days of January, I'm turning to a MadTree classic to officially ring in 2023 for John Likes Beer. That's right, I'm drinking an aged bottle of Coffee & Vanilla Bourbon Barrel Aged Axis Mundi (Axis Mundi henceforth).

Here's hoping you had a Merry Christmas! The holiday was a whirlwind for Michelle and me--the roads to and from our holiday destination were fraught with peril (due entirely to Winter Storm Elliot). Yet, we made it there and back again all the same.

Now that things are finally settling down, we're posted up at home and dealing with all the lingering pre-Christmas to-dos that are left. On this break from them, I'm taking time, at last, to get out my Christmas '22 post: Great Lakes' Barrel Aged Christmas Ale.