Dry January begins tomorrow, so this beer is my last hurrah for a month. Given that, I thought I'd break out something special. Yesterday, I ventured deep into my cellar to see what I could find. Now, let's explore this aged stout together.

I'm saying my goodbyes to 2024 with Braxton's Dark Charge Cinnamon Roll. This came as the second of three bottles in the Dark Charge Breakfast Box (I have the other two stashed away for who knows when). My bottle is number 49/1000. Grab yourself a beer and let's bid farewell to this year together and in style.

What a month November's been! I'm sprinting to the finish line of NaNoWriMo (50k words is calling my name) and just about ready to deck the halls around the blog to ring in the Christmas season. But before we start the Old Saint Nick welcoming procedures, we have one Maple Month offering to make.

We're finishing Maple Month proper as we started it: With a barleywine from Jackie O's. But, it's more than just a barleywine, it's a barleywine cuvée. It's Cellar Cuvée 15.

This post was written during a power outage. Please forgive the poor quality of the pictures. 

Here we are on the last day of Oktoberfest. I wanted to see the month off with an official Oktoberfest lager but I couldn't find any I hadn't done before. So, we're left with something else from Germany. That's fine, though. Germany knows how to make beer.

That something else is Hofbrauhaus Freising's Festbier. Let's see how this German-brewed, unofficial Oktoberfest-style lager's drinking!

Merry Christmas in July! I'll start this post by saying that today's beer isn't the beer I'd intended to do up for Xmas in July '24. When I found myself at a nearby bottleshop in February looking for a beer among their straggling holiday ales, hoping to find the one today, I inadvertently snagged something that'd I'd reviewed before. Honestly, considering I've been doing this whole blog thing for nearly a decade, I'm surprised incidents like that don't happen more frequently.

I didn't realize my mistake until last weekend. In July. Do you know how many of last year's holiday beers are still kicking around on store shelves this deep into the summer? I headed out to another nearby bottleshop with little hopes of finding anything worth drinking for today.

Despite my forlorn outlook, luck was on my side! They had a cart full of four-packs of Toppling Goliath's Holidotz clearanced out for $8/pop. Having had and liking one or two of the brewery's beers before, I saw this as a sign and grabbed a pack. Let's see how this special holiday lager's drinking!

For my second and final Dry January (well, in my case, more like Damp January--I had my planned hiccup weekend and a one-beer, post-moving-out-a-friend unplanned hiccup) post, I'm doing something special. 

I was at a local bottleshop trying to decide what non-alcoholic beer to grab next. The lady working there suggested the Guinness, saying that she's been having customers report to her after trying it, saying "It's as good as the real thing!" With her recommendation (and an observation that it was the cheapest non-American macro option), it was a done deal. This evening, I'm doing up Guinness 0.0.

Look at me, coming in under the wire to get my second bock post up before the calendar turns to April. Kudos to me, all around.

Like I mentioned briefly in my last post, this spring seems to be a weird drought for the bock, a seasonal style I always anticipate. I only found one truly seasonal offering of it (that'd be MadTree's Guten Bock). The other beer I picked up was originally a seasonal beer but, due to fan outcry, has long since been made a core offering. That lager is, of course, Shiner Bock.

This is it: The official end of the blog's Oktoberfest season. It's become something of a tradition in recent years to see September off with an actual German Oktoberfest. 

To that end, we have Hacker-Pschorr's Oktoberfest Märzen today. This is one of the few beers you can get at the true Oktoberfest celebration (the one in Munich). Only six breweries--all Munich-based--are allowed to serve at the festival. Let's get the cap off my bottle and see what all the German-inspired fuss is about.

It's a holiday weekend which, obviously, means y'all are lucky enough to get to back-to-back posts from me (before a pre-Christmas in July hiatus). Like yesterday's post, today's beer was brought on by external factors. Like yesterday, we'll get into it.

For now, sit down, crack open a beer of your own, and throw on some metal (click this for that last part; I have you covered). We're doing 3 Floyds' Rites of Ramm.

This is one of those incredibly rare occurrences where the weather's bad enough that my employer shutters its offices for the day so its employees can stay home and safe. Right now, we're getting pummeled with freezing rain, which will last until this evening when it turns to snow. The power's still on--truth be told, I don't think we'll lose it (but we're covered with firewood and bottled water if we do).

After a lazy morning I'm now welcoming an equally lazy afternoon with a bottle of Wolf's Ridge's Dire Wolf Coffee Joy, which I'm sipping before a roaring blaze in our wood-burning stove. I'm so happy to be indoors right now.

Today, we're rounding the corner and closing in on Maple Month's homestretch, which means just one thing: I'll be drinking some bruisers.

The first in this series of three is from Hubbard's Cave. They do a lot within the pastrystout scene and are something of a big deal. Last year I drank their Imperial Maple Stout and scored it perfectly, meaning it earned my highest recommendation. Will the brewery's Päncake Walk impress me just as much?

Today marks the first autumn day that actually looks like a autumn day. The sky's overcast and the trees are beginning to adorn their colorful fall cloaks--the maple across the street from our house has a healthy carpeting of fallen leaves beneath its boughs.

Okay, so. This is a big one for me. No, not because today's the start of the blog's Halloween season. It's big because I've never before featured any Budweiser product on the blog. I hadn't intended to ever feature a Bud beverage really. This isn't snobbiness (I have featured, and will again, AB InBev beers and enjoy them regularly in my home life). I just don't particularly care for Bud. When I think of "foamy, bad macro beer" Bud's at the pinnacle of that list.

But last year I talked drank my first ever hard seltzer: Braxton's Vive Pumpkin Spice. I was immediately smitten. When I read that Bud's hard seltzer arm was doing a pumpkin spice offering, I knew I needed to try it, if only to solidify that not all pumpkin spice hard seltzers are created equal. Or, maybe to be floored and a convert to Bud Light hard seltzer. Which do you think will happen?

Bell's Two Hearted Ale was the first IPA to ever hook me. It was the first offering of the style I'd had that didn't wallop me with loads of hops from the first swig onward. While I've since trained my brain to overlook that "wow, this is really bitter and probably poisonous" response and can get behind some super hoppy IPAs, there'll always be a special place in my heart for Two Hearted.

So, when I found out Bell's had Light Hearted, a lo-cal sister beer to Two Hearted, I hunted some down to try immediately. I recall being impressed. Yes, that means that this isn't a new-to-me entry in my ongoing lo-cal beer series. But, I do think it's been long enough since I had Light Hearted (I only ever bought that single sixer before grabbing today's can) that I'm heading into the ale with fresh enough taste buds. Let's see how my initial impression's held up.

Just like that, it's the 13th of December, meaning that we're over halfway through the 2019 Christmas season. I'm a little shocked at how quickly the season's rolling by. The good news is that I'm nearly done with my Christmas shopping. Woo hoo!


I have the day off today and some stuff I'd like to get done around the house. But, before getting into that, a beer review's in order. On the block today is Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale.

It's finally December! Last night I stayed up a little late to hang the last of our Christmas lights and this morning I woke up early to change the my car's oil while the sun shone. Now, it's cloudy and cold. I think I'm pretty well due for a beer.


Today's beer is the second of the blog's Christmas season: Citra Noel, the Christmas ale from Columbus Brewing Company. I've never had Columbus Brewing Company (CBC from here on out), but I'm excited to see how this drinks.

This is a beer I've had before. In fact, this is a yearly purchase for me. Because of the brewery producing it, as well as the company that owns it, it's pretty damn easy to find. Given this (I know that not every brew I'm touching upon this month is readily available to each of you, dear readers), I thought it prudent to devote a post to it.


So, here we go: Elysian's Night Owl.

This is an Oktoberfest beer I've been meaning to get to since, oh, about 2016. Back then, my dad sent me a text praising the lager and letting me know that I should try it. For the last two years, I've found it too late for my Oktoberfest season. This year, though, I made sure to seek it out early.


Without further ado, it's time to crack into the can. Here we are: Left Hand's Oktoberfest Märzen Lager.

This post marks the halfway point of the blog's Oktoberfest season. It's the Wednesday of the whole thing, if you will. So, what better day of the week to do this write-up than, well, Wednesday?


Is it obvious that I'm struggling to think of a good introduction? I hope so, because everything here was founded upon transparency. Today's post, by the way, is Hi-Wire's entry into the Oktoberfest canon: Zirkusfest. I'm pretty excited for this because, until I found this can at my local bottleshop, I had no idea that Hi-Wire had thrown their hat into this specific style ring. Let's see how it drinks.

This seems like it should be the perfect beer to cap off summer. Sure, right now it's in the upper 70s and cicadas are singing from the trees that surround our house. But, it's cloudy and a few trees in the woods next to my porch are turning orange for the fall. Summer is reaching its natural conclusion.


Now, considering the setting I've so carefully laid plain for you, look at the label of Silver Harbor's Kumbaya: a group of people huddled around a beach bonfire while the sun sets. Do you get what I'm saying? Now, let's crack into this to find out if Kumbaya is really the perfect beer to enjoy for the blog's farewell to summer.

I've been waiting for this one. I picked up six bottles of this badboy at its release on August 25th. While I technically was in Michigan to celebrate my brother's birthday, it was a happy accident that my dad agreed to lug us to Saugatuck so I could nab some of this stuff.


What's it been doing since late August? Aging in my garage. I haven't touched any of the six bottles I grabbed (it was $5 a bottle, by the way. And, since I live in Ohio, I won't be getting any of the sweet Michigan deposit back on them) because I knew I wanted to save my first impression of Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Pumpkin Chai (henceforth, BBAIPC) for this post. Let's dive in.