Before anyone says otherwise, I am doing a Märzen this Oktoberfest season. Hell, that's this post is about! See? Last time I said I was more of a Märzen guy, so here it is. Märzen.

And here we are. Like I promised in this month's first post, I've saved the biggest beer for last, which is especially fitting as I crossed the 50,000-word NaNoWriMo finish line this morning (go, me!). Today, we're taking a look at a special beer from one of my original favorite craft breweries (has it really been two and a half years since they got screen time on the blog? Wow, too long).

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).

November really threw me for a loop. I didn't get to finish Maple Month here on the blog, nor did I finish my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. I took tasting notes for the final beer I was going to post about and snapped the necessary pictures for it. However, I didn't care for the beer and, because of how hectic the end of the month was for me, I decided not to actually make the whole post.

It's finally that mystical time of year, when the fabric of the veil begins to wane and the nights grow all the cooler, darker, and longer. I've spent the better part of today at my favorite Oktoberfest celebration but I'm always ready to revel in the murkier parts of the the Halloween season.

As such, we have the blog's first pumpkin ale of the season: North High's Farm Hand. How is it? Let's find out.

This beer is the one I'd originally lined up to drink for this year's Christmas in July. See, shortly after Christmas last year, I found myself (as one so often does) in a local bottleshop. They had Wolf's Ridge's Holiday Series two-pack discounted to $15 or $20. I snagged one, figuring I'd drink a bottle for this Christmas and the other for X-mas in July.

Well, as you might know, I drank something else, something a little more unexpected, for that July post. Instead, I figured I'd sit on both beers until this December. Since it's this December now, and I have a weekend off and both beers still to drink, the time's come to break into that pack. Here's the first: Gingerbread Cookie Clear Sky.

We've come now, to the ending of the current blog season. This is the final beer of 2021's Maple Month. I purchased this bottle on November 27th, 2020. I've had it in my cellar for nearly a year.

This beer, this Maple Month's swansong, is, of course Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand #4 Special Stout (I'll refer to it as #4 from here on out). I picked this up nearly a year ago knowing that I'd crack into it for this evening's post. Let's see if cellaring it for a year's paid off.

So, that fall feeling I've had for the last few post is now a thing of the past. We've seen scorchers every day for the last week(ish), and we'll see scorchers for days yet to come. I'm trying my best to look beyond the heat--leaves are still falling, the autumnal aroma of decaying leaves flits through the air, and pumpkins abound.

It's still October, after all. Halloween's three weeks away (and, boy, do I still have beers and beers left between now and then). We're moving forward, hoping the chill and the spooks of the season catch up to us. Today, we're striving for this with Ithaca Beer Co.'s Country Pumpkin.

The cool weather just keeps on a-coming! This morning when I came out to read on my porch (I'm working on Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit) I had to throw on a long sleeve shirt to stave off the bite of chill in the air. It was great. I knew from the exact moment I sat down to open up my book that I'd be tackling the next Oktoberfest post. Sometimes things just fall right into place.

Luckily I had the second beer of the season in my fridge already, just waiting for the moment I'd need it. That beer's Brink's Brinktoberfest. Let's see how it's drinking on this fine late-summer evening.

This is a beer that I found the day I heard about it. A month or so ago, I saw a bottleshop I follow on social media post about it. Intrigued, I resolved to pick it up if I ever happened upon it in the wild. Later that day, I found it in a totally different bottleshop while I was heading home from work. And now here we are.

The beer is R. Shea's Twitchy. I see on the brewery's website that they add another word to the name, but it's not a super good word (and one that I think we should work to de-normalize) so I won't be including it here. Nor is that word anywhere on my can. I figured I should address that early on in the post. 

Anyway, this might just be the biggest (ABV-wise) beer I drink this season. If it's not, it up there. Let's get to it.