Christmas Ale by Breckenridge Brewery - My Microbrew Review

Here I am on a lazy, cold and sunny late November afternoon. Thanksgiving is just a few days off and Christmas just around the bend. Snow is in the forecast this week. What a perfect day to imbibe in a bottle of Christmas Ale by Breckenridge Brewery.

Breckenridge Brewery is a Colorado brewery located in Denver. They've been around the block in the microbrewing arena, and I've been fortunate to sample a few of their craft beers even though I'm located way out here in Pennsylvania. I'm anxious to try the Breckenridge Christmas Ale however so I'm not going to waste any time in getting started with my microbrew review. Let's go, shall we?

First of all, the beer bottle label is festive for the Christmas season no doubt about that. Makes you want to grab the bottle right out of the sixpack shop cooler.

Pouring the beer into my unchilled glass, it pours a fairly dark ruby red in color with just a tinge of rusty copper on the edges. The head of the beer welled up to about a week one finger head and quickly dissipates to a mild glaze of tan cream on top.

The aroma of the beer is sticky and sweet with a punch of alcohol to boot. I detected a smoky dark coffee scent with some brown sugar presence, maybe a bit of raisins way there in the background. Smells pretty decent but nothing totally intriguing or complex in character.

Breckenridge Christmas Ale sips rather thin in the mouthful for as rich and sticky as it smells and appears. There's alot of alcohol in the mouth and alcoholic burn in the swallow. First impression in drinking this microbrew is that it's more of a brown ale than a winter warmer style. Although it is rather malty, there's a fair deal of hoppy bitterness that lies on the tongue and it finishes somewhat crisply. The mouthful was just a little too thin for my liking however.

Breckenridge Brewery's Christmas Ale is not a bad beer. It's respectable and looks good in a glass. It would look festive having a few bottles lined up in the fridge too given the label design. I've had better winter warmers though and there are many other microbrews and craft beers out there that better represent Christmas beers and Winter Warmers in particular. Given the 7.40% alcohol beer content for Christmas Ale, it does leave a warm feeling in the belly however.

If you've had alot of experience with winter warmer beers, you may not find Breckenridge Christmas Ale all that exciting. If you'd just like to try a craft beer for the Christmas season, this is a fair one to experiment with and share with a few friends around the Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner table this season. Breckenridge Brewing Christmas Ale gets a 5.75 out of 10.00 micro brew review points.

I've got quite a few more microbrews on my list of Christmas beer to sample before the holidays and I'll be posting again shortly, so stop back soon and thanks for reading this microbrew beer review!

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Do you love beer? Did you enjoy reading this microbrew beer review? If you love beer and craft beers & microbrews in particular, you'll find many more craft beer reviews of both new and old microbrews and also fun microbrew and craft beer-related mish-mash at the
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Enjoy, and always remember to drink responsibly!

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A Microbrew Review of Lancaster Brewing Company's Winter Warmer

The holidays are just around the corner and for any microbrew and craft beer lover, this season is always met with excitement. I love Christmas beers and winter warmers. The winter beer season is officially upon us and I'll be reviewing microbrews of the wintertime ilk for the next several months.

Tonight, I reached in the fridge and pulled out Lancaster Brewing Company's Winter Warmer. Lancaster Brewing Company (an eastern Pennsylvania microbrewery) offers some great beers and I was looking forward to trying their Winter Warmer offering eagerly.

Pouring the beer into my unchilled beer glass, This beer pours a dark ruby, mahogany color with a mild creamy tan head only about a finger deep and quick to subside to a meer corona of froth on the outer walls of the glass. Nice color and virtually opaque with only the slightest hint of light passing through when held up to the kitchen fan light.

Classified as an Olde Ale, this beer's scent is warm and fuzzy, sweet and caramelly with a hint of spiciness in the nose. Toffy and scotch eminates from the surface with a butter cookie background.

First sip is smooth on the tongue with a sharper alcoholic bite in the swallow. Winter Warmer is a very sweet and sticky microbrew leaving a ring of lollipop stickiness around the lips. It's rich and malty and almost a meal in itself. A slight toffy presence can be detected. The beer became even more sweet and sticky as the beer warmed in my glass. There was no lacing on the glass whatsoever as the microbrew disappeared slowly. This one is definitely a slow sipping kind of craft beer.

Overall, I can definitely recommend Lancaster Brewing Company Winter Warmer for one of those upcoming cold winter's evenings around the fireplace. It's a holiday style craft beer that is worth a try and I will be sure to be picking up several more Winter Warmers before the holiday beer season is over.

One other recommendation is to drink this beer with respect. Lancaster Brewing's Winter Warmer is a bit dominant when it comes to the alcohol level. When it comes to alcohol content in beer, this winter ale boasts a hearty 8.9% alcohol by volume rating and having more than two in a sitting is probably going to invite trouble.

So there you have it. First holiday style beer for the Christmas season and Lancaster Brewing Company's Winter Warmer is a hit in my book. I'm giving it an 8.0 out of 10.00 beer rating points for my microbrew review. Get your hands on Winter Warmer if you have a chance this winter. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
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Like beer? Did you enjoy reading this microbrew beer review? If you love beer and craft beers & microbrews in particular, you'll find many more craft beer reviews of both new and old microbrews and also fun microbrew and craft beer-related mish-mash at the
===>microbrew review blog
or =====>Craft Beer Reviews.

Enjoy, and always remember to drink responsibly!

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Great Divide Brewing Hibernation Ale - From One of Denver, Colorado Microbreweries Finest!

I've really, really been wanting to try Great Divide Brewing Company's "Hibernation Ale" for many a year now. Problem was, there was just no way of locating even a lonely 12 ounce bottle of it anywhere near Western Pennsylvania (having had to survive the long trip from its native Denver, Colorado). Many thanks, however, go out to Stella's Beer Barn where I finally found my way to not just one, but a virtually unlimited supply (as long as it holds out I guess) of Hibernation Ale.

I've heard some good things about this microbrew from some of my friends in the know. Hibernation Ale didn't really disappoint me either.

I had picked up a few bottles in advance, thinking this would be a pretty good beer.
Cracking open the first chilled bottle of this "winter warmer" , I anxiously poured into a 12 ounce unchilled beer mug. Head was prominently evident and dominated. A two finger head shot up and would not be denied as it stayed present a good five minutes and beyond (but I couldn't be denied either and I wasn't going to just sit there for an hour watching how long the head held up). I needed to drink this beer!

Color, dark, dark ruby red almost a murky merge to brown. Effervesence was prevalent and all about, bubbles going crazy everywhere here.

Aroma presented a high sweet acidic cherry and molasses scent with the high level of malts standing in reverie. A bit of alcoholic burn was prominent and sensed in the scent as well.

Sip number one brought a sweet, and yet sour undertoned, flavor to my palate. While I'd smelled a molasses type aroma initially, the tasting didn't prove me entirely wrong. This craft beer is sweet (for the most part), sticky and strong. While I poured this beer somewhere around 45 degrees temperature, the alcohol burn was imminently present. And that alcoholic burn of the 8.1 percent acohol by volume rating only got stronger as the beer warmed. This was a sipper. I would not want to be rapidly quaffing these at a Christmas party, Superbowl Tailgate party or in the backyard after a hot day lawn mowing. Sit by the fireplace on a cold winters eve to enjoy this one responsibly and to it fullest.

One thing that I would have liked in Great Divide Hibernation Ale is a more formidable balance between the malt and the hops. While the bottle label boasts a complex balance between the two factors, I just didn't quite get any respectable props from the hops. A past maturity issue? I don't think so. I may be wrong (and I often am) but only a few short months past this beers prime intended presentation period should not throw off kilter a hoppy presence as much as I've been able to detect in this micro brew.

In my humble opinion, I like Great Divide Hibernation Ale. I really do. I want to like it more however. It just didn't "complete me" I guess. It certainly was rich in body, I'd go so far as to call it thick in mouthful. But the complexity promised just wasn't altogether there. The warming effect of the relatively high alcohol by volume makes it a sipper. So any imperfections become drawn out over an hour or so. It's definitely worth a try for microbrew enthusiasts though. Give it a shot and I will again too (if I find it again) come the winter months of '07-'08 when the next generation of Hibernation Ale will be in it's prime. Like I said, I've heard great things and I want to really like this beer. I want to want it come hibernation time next winter.

Read more reviews of microbrews at Microbrew Review or My Squidoo Lens.

Red Hook "Winter Hook" Just Doesn't Have Me Hooked

It's winter here in good ole' Western PA and things can get pretty boring past the holidays in that lull between Christmas, New Year's and.....Memorial Day I guess. Anyway, it's finally getting cold around here and maybe we'll even see some snow before spring (can you believe it snowed in Malibu, CA today and we're still snow free in PA?).

Well, winter is one of my favorite months because I'm a big fan of winter style beers, if you can even call it a style. I always try to get my hands on as many different new winter type microbrews which I haven't tried before. I'll be starting to post more now that the holiday rush is over and the winter-styles of microbrews will be my main focus for sure.

Red Hook Brewery has a winter offering called....are you ready? Winter Hook. Wow, the name on the bottle blew me away right off the bat. I had to try it. All kidding aside however, Winter Hook is not a bad winter brew. My bottle indicated a brewing date of 11/15/06 which makes it fairly fresh to sample.

Pouring into a standard pub style glass, the color was very much a carmel tone and very clear. Head about 1/2 inch but it dissipated within just a few quick minutes. Taking a long whiff of aroma pulled in a caramel smell but also just a twinge of spiciness that I could only closely compare to a nutmeg scent.

Taste, pretty sweet and sticky which surprised me a little. I've tried a few microbrews from Red Hook before and most that I've tried have given me a "hoppy" impression of this brewery and its microbrews. This one was an aboutface. In fact, this is the first year I've seen Winter Hook around these parts at least so I am a bit curious as to whether this might be a new offering from the Red Hook folks.

This beer, as mentioned was sweet, and tasted very much of caramel, nutmeg (which helped confirm the aroma) and very faint hops in the far background. It was decent in overall drinkability at 6% ABV and I found myself trying a second before I knew it. Whether that qualifies this microbrew as a good one or not, I'm still not overall ready to rank it way up there in my humble opinion. It kind of just went down easy and rolled into another bottle. I didn't really think to myself " man, that was great, I think I'll have another!".

Overall, I would recommend giving this one a shot if you haven't tried it before. It may be just your thing but this beer just didn't go really to one extreme or the other with me. I'd call it a good microbrew, but nothing I'd go searching for 100 miles down the road. Maybe Red Hook Brewery rotates a different style in every year for their "Winter Hook" like some microbreweries do. I really don't know for sure but hey, give it a try. Let me know what you think. It's still far beyond the standard everyday mass produced stuff you will find anywhere else.

I'd give it a 5.75 out of 10.00. Check out Red Hook's other beers here at their site http://www.redhook.com/ Just a heads up, if you like IPA's like I do, they do offer a very good one if you get a chance to check one out sometime (highly recommeded!).

You can check out more reviews of new microbrews and fun microbrew and craft beer related info at Microbrew Review or My Squidoo Lens. Check out Summer Microbrew too!