It's the Winter Solstice! Okay, so it was at four o'clock this morning but who cares? After this, the nights will begin growing shorter and the days longer. Tonight's a night for keeping indoors, reading and listening to music, and staying warm and comfortable against the long dark without your home. A beer certainly wouldn't go amiss.

Since it's still the holiday season, I have a Christmas ale slated for tonight: Masthead's Robot Santa's Christmas Ale (Robot Santa from here on out). How is it? Well, I've had it before so I know. This'll be a fun mystery for you!

So comes October, and so comes the blog's Halloween season. I have a slate of beers ready to go, all of which are new to me. I hope we're in for more treats than tricks. I love pumpkin beers but at times they can be a gamble.

Let's hope today's brew isn't a gamble. We have Abomination's Lil' Pumpky as our Spooky Finger Puppet Ghost Month starter. Let's roll the dice and keep our fingers crossed for treats (which, for this odd analogy, are sixes). Really, though, how could we go wrong with a name like Lil' Pumpky?

Today's beer--the blog's first of the 2022--is one I've had in my posession for a little over three years. It was a Christmas gift back in 2019 (you, know, pre-pandemic) and came from either my dad (I think he's the culprit) or my brother. It was a beer I'd never heard of from a brewery I've only encountered once.

I hadn't meant to age it for three years (seeing as how it was nearly one when it was gifted to me). Nor had I meant to put off this month's initial post for this long (I've had two Covid scares already this calendar year--blowing my record of zero out of the water). Yet, here we are, beginning to forge ahead. Today I'm drinking Whiner's Fur Letter Word. 

This post is about a ghost. No, not an actual ghost. Those don't really exist. Instead, this post is about a ghost beer. It's a bit of a mental leap to get to that claim, so I'll walk you through it.

Around the time I was really started my craft beer journey, MadTree released barrel-aged variants of its The Great PumpCAN. Pumpkin beers and I didn't really see eye to eye at that time and the BA PumpCAN releases weren't even on my radar. It wasn't until I visited MadTree a few months after the release that I saw a poster for the beers and knew what I'd missed out on.

Now, let's pivot to talk about whales. I promise, this loops back around. A whale is a limited, rare, and highly sought-after beer. I've been lucky enough to enjoy a whale or two in my life. But, what's more important to me are my personal whales. These are beers that I'm after--still usually pretty rare--that might not necessarily be on someone else's whale list.

Beyond that, you have your white whales, your Moby Dicks, the ones that get away and, no matter how close you think you are to finally tracking them down, vanish. For five years that's what Bourbon Barrel Aged PumpCAN was to me (and it's what the rum barrel variant of it still is). Then, out of thin air, MadTree broke some beers out of their cellar last fall, BBA Pumpcan among them. My white whale had returned from the dead. A ghost, one that I managed to trap, one that's been haunting my cellar since.

Today, on All Hallow's Eve, I'm tearing into this ghost whale. Let's see if it lives up to the hype I've built around it.

It just feels like Halloween today, you know? Besides the grey overcast sky, the brilliant autumn colors alighting the trees, and the crisp breeze on the 50-something degree day, I mean. Tonight Michelle and I are carving our pumpkins while watching Hocus Pocus. Spooky.

So, to keep the Halloween convoy that is today's activities a-trucking, I figured I might as well do up my next post of the month. This is a beer I've had before (I bought it on a whim when it dropped the other month--late-August, I think). I haven't had it since but, if I'm remembering correctly, it's something pretty special. Today I'm cracking into Erie Brewing Company's Johnny Rails.

You ever want a beer but, you know, not want a beer? For instance, after a few drinks you think, "I could go for another but I don't want to feel it in the morning?" Or, are there times when you want to experience the flavors and aromas of a beer without dealing with the alcohol? Now, what if that beer was a stout?

Bonus Háma butt on the left there.

A good non-alcoholic stout is something I've been on the hunt for for quite some time. I work late on Tuesdays and I don't always want an actual beer when I get home. A can of soda's out of the question--that caffeine'll keep me up later than I'd like. Sure, I could do milk or juice or water (or a warm beverage), but, man, I'd prefer a beer! Today, I'm breaking into the first beer I've found that might just scratch that incredibly specific NA stout itch: BrewDog's Stout AF.

I've been collecting records since high school, but I only bought my first turntable this year. Sure, I've had a turntable in the past: I inherited a suitcase style table from my late great-grandfather with an old, rusty stylus (along with all his records, which include some amazing original Johnny Cash releases). But, until February, I've never been able to play my vinyl without fear of ruining them.


Since this is my first Record Store Day with a usable turntable, I awoke with excitement this morning. I drove to the record store in my old Cincinnati neighborhood to pick up the RSD release of The Best of Townes Van Zandt (on tiger-eye vinyl). While I was there I also nabbed an Italian bootleg Nirvana record entitled Damage, Mon Amour. On my way home I hit up a grocery store in search of a record-related beer. I was not disappointed. So, today I present to you (as I listen to that Best of Townes Van Zandt album) Rhinegeist's Slow Jam.

It's February. It's meant to be cold and dark, with some snow, or sleet, or fog to make it drearier. Sure Valentine's Day is tomorrow, but I've always taken that to be a bright point in an otherwise dreadful month.


And, yeah. We've experienced cold, dark, foggy, snowy, and sleety days here in the last week. We've also hit unseasonably warm weather (60°) and cloudless, sunny days. In fact, today was one such of those cloudless, sunny days. But, I think I have a cure. I think I've found just the beer to knock this month back into its place: North Pier's Old Shuck. So, join me as I pull the curtains closed and put on some creepy music. Hopefully, all this is befitting this porter.