Winter Beers

There are quite a few winter beers around this season and most of them are good. These beers are made to be malty and rich, the brewers often add things like spices, fruit and nuts to the malt to make the beer more festive. Winter beers are usually darker, since roasted barley is traditionally a common ingredient, and higher in alcohol than the average beer. 

Like Oktoberfest beer in Germany, the English tradition of brewing "Winter Warmers" for the holidays dates back centuries. As you can see, the winter beers available to me are mostly from the U.S. and, maybe it is just my Christmas spirit, but they did not disappoint.

Anchor Steam Merry Christmas and Happy New Year: Looks like a stout, really dark with little head. It is medium in body and a bit malty. On entry it tastes sweet, but on the finish some bitterness shows up which dries out the mouth. There are some nice flavors going such as caramel, sugar, almonds and holiday spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. What stands out is a piney, tree sap sort of taste, which makes this beer perfect for the holiday season. WORTH FULL PRICE.

Anderson Valley Winter Solstice: Amber color, light in body but with a bit of malt. It is on the sweet side with some bitterness on the finish. There are hints of maple syrup and citrus. Overall this beer is well balanced & quite good. WORTH FULL PRICE.

Blue Point Winter Ale: Dark, little head. This one is nicely balanced: not too sweet, not too bitter. There is some maltiness, but overall it is pretty light. There are hints of almond and hazelnut on the finish, so overall it is good. I was very disappointed with their Oktoberfest, so I am glad that Blue Point’s Winter Ale is a decent one. BUY IT ON SALE.

Delirium Noel: Deep copper color with a rich, creamy head on top. It is very rich and has that uniquely Belgian characteristic of being malty and hoppy at the same time. There are flavors of fig and nuts; the finish lasts about 2 minutes. Very rich and extremely well-rounded, this beer is head & shoulders above the rest. WORTH FULL PRICE.

Innis & Gunn Winter Beer: This is a copper colored Scottish Beer. It is sweet and malty with some bitterness; overall it is a really nice, rich beer that is well-rounded. There are hints of citrus and vanilla, with some oak on the finish. WORTH FULL PRICE.

Magic Hat Howl: Dark; it looks and drinks like a stout. There are hints of vanilla, but the flavor that stands out by far is dark roasted coffee. This reminds me of an unsweetened iced mocha. It is like a festive porter; very interesting. BUY IT ON SALE.

Samuel Adams Winter Lager: A good-looking beer, dark amber color with a creamy head. There is some malty flavor to this one, but it is cut a little by hop bitterness. This is not a bad thing though, the bitterness rounds out the beer nicely.  It is pretty full-bodied overall and has a bit of cinnamon, especially on the finish. If you search for it, you can taste a little citrus. BUY IT ON SALE.

Shiner Holiday Cheer: This beer is quite sweet, but not too much for my taste. Flavors of apricot and peaches stand out the most, along with some citrus and just a touch of hop bitterness. The finish is nutty and it lasts. WORTH FULL PRICE.

Spiced Rum

The whole idea of spiced rum is just not my style. I really like rum, it is my favorite spirit, but I like rum, not rum with sugar & other flavors added. It is my thinking that, generally, if you want your liquor to taste like something else, you mix a cocktail that tastes the way you want it to taste. There are plenty ways of sweetening &/or masking the taste of rum by adding fruit, sugar, cola, eggnog, etc. However, spiced rums are on the rise and I do like to try new things, so I recently did a taste test of several spiced rums that are on our shelves.

Admiral Nelson: Smooth upon entry to the mouth, creamy, a little thinner than the others. The finish is harsh, almost like you have just swallowed straight dry rum.

Bacardi Oakheart: Entry is smooth and sweet all the way to the finish. This is the sweetest of these rums. A particular creaminess appears in this one and you can pick up cinnamon and vanilla so it has a pretty round taste, it reminded me of drinking a sweet & creamy latte.

Captain Morgan: sweet and smooth upon entry and all the way to the finish. It is creamy, the flavor that most appears is vanilla. Very easy to drink.

Sailor Jerry: Smooth going in, the strength of the rum shows up in your mouth & stays through the finish, but not as harsh as Admiral Nelson. Sailor Jerry is sweet, but it has much less of the cream & vanilla tastes of the others; it is more fruity. What stood out to me the most was cherry. It reminded me of a Dr. Pepper.

Mixing any of these with cola seems ridiculous to me, since they are already sweet & would almost disappear in the caramel flavors & sweetness of the cola (unless you don’t like rum, but you want to drink it anyway), but that seems to be the most popular mixer. I recommend spiced rum in a mojito because I had it once at a bar on Sanibel Island & it was great. I have mixed spiced rum with lime juice (which I like because the acid & sourness of the lime cuts the rum’s sweetness) and pineapple juice (which didn’t make a great drink, but it was plenty sweet).

Oktoberfest Reviews:

Recently, a friend and I did a taste test of this year’s Oktoberfest beers that we had in stock at the store. Traditionally, Oktoberfest (or Marzen) is a lager brewed with bottom-fermenting yeast, which needs low temperatures to act. The beer was brewed in Bavaria (southern Germany) until March (ergo “Marzen”), when the weather began to warm up. During the summer, brewers would stash their beer in caves or other dark places and surround the beer with blocks of ice to keep the summer heat from spoiling it.

As far as I know, the traditional method is not followed today, at least not by breweries large enough for us to find in a liquor store in Florida. But the style of the beer has caught on as a seasonal offering by many breweries and every year it seems there is more Oktoberfest on the shelves.

Red Brick Oktoberfest: malty, sweet, light to medium feel. This one is more full-bodied than any of them, there is a bit of bitterness, but overall it retains a nice, rich flavor. WORTH FULL PRICE.

Magic Hat “Hex” Ourtoberfest: malty and sweet, light to medium feel. Has some structure to it: there are hints of citrus and just a little hop bitterness on the finish. WORTH FULL PRICE.

Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest: rich malt, sweet and light, just a little bitter. BUY IT ON SALE.

Spaten Oktoberfest: malty and quite sweet. There is some hop bitterness on the finish; light to medium mouthfeel. What I imagine the traditional Oktoberfest would have tasted like. BUY IT ON SALE.

Samuel Adams Octoberfest: Quite malty with a good amount of sweetness. This is the Oktoberfest I judge others by. It is very standard & I like it. If it is worse than Sam Adams, it’s not worth drinking. If it’s better, then it must be well-crafted, because Sam Adams is hard to beat. BUY IT ON SALE.

Beck’s Oktoberfest: Somewhat sweet, there is a nice maltiness. There is some bitterness which lingers a while in the finish. This is where it misses the mark of being an Oktoberfest, but you wouldn’t mistake it for anything else. DRINK IF IT’S FREE.

Harpoon Octoberfest: Some sweetness, not very malty, the finish if long & quite hoppy. If there were less bitterness, maybe the sweet, malty Oktoberfest characteristics would come through in the finish, but they really don’t. This beer really does taste good; it just seems to miss its goal: if it were not on the label I would not think it was meant to be an Oktoberfest. DRINK IF IT’S FREE.

Leinenkugel Oktoberfest: Very little malt, some sweetness, it is very light. There isn’t a lot there, it tastes watered-down. EMERGENCIES ONLY.

Blue Point Oktoberfest: Light to medium feel, too sweet. There really isn’t anything good to say about this beer. It seems that they added too much sugar to this batch. There is no malt so speak of; it tastes like Steel Reserve. EMERGENCIES ONLY.