This evening's beer (a surprise! I was saving the for later but the sudden chill in the area bumped it up) was a gift from my dad. He and my mom came down to visit last month so they could spend some time with their favorite (i.e. only) grandkid. 

While doing so, we all swung by a local bottleshop. I somehow (that's sarcastic, by the way. It doesn't come through great over text) convinced Dad to grab a couple of beers for himself. One of those was Hi-Wire's Pumpkin Spicewalla Latte 10W-40 (Pumpkin Spicewalla henceforth). Before he left, he broke the four-pack in half, taking two cans with him and leaving two with me. Thanks, Dad! Let's see how this stout drinks.

Our second beer for the month is the final of two pumpkin-themed ales I picked up post-Halloween last year. You can tell this is last year's can because it has the old label art (which I prefer--the new one isn't as fantasy-driven, going from the check-in pictures on the ale's Untappd page).

Today, we're doing Royal Docks' Pumpkinslayer, which I grabbed from a bottleshop in my hometown while visiting with my folks during the last Christmas season. It came in a four-pack, and I drank three cans of it in pretty quick succession during the end of December '22 and beginning of January '23. I liked it then. Let's see if I still like it nine months removed.

Okay. Michelle and I are taking a break from our Christmas cookie prep (everything's baked, we just need to whip up the frosting and slather it on the cookies), which means it's officially beer o'clock.

Today's beer is the second part of Wolf Ridge's 2020 Holiday Series: Spiced Date Dire Wolf. My house is currently Christmas scented (spruce from our live tree, sugar cookies from our baking session, and a little smoke from the fire blazing away happily in our buck stove), so I'm stoked on another Christmassy beer.

It's somehow suddenly the longest day of the year. Summer's returned with it's oppressive heat that the mild breeze is doing little to remedy. The bees are busy buzzing about the flowers before my porch. Really feels like February was last week, right?


I've got a little something special today. An unplanned post. See, I was strolling through the beer section of my local grocery store earlier this week and saw that they only had one sixer of Anderson Valley's Summer Solstice left. I'd kicked around buying it when I first started seeing it in May, but never took the plunge. But, since I knew that the summer solstice was coming up (as of right now, when I'm typing this, it's officially 2.5 hours away). So, I figured, why not?