Day 19 of the Advent-ure Calendar
Day 19: SweetWater Brewing Co. Festive Ale
Per SweetWater’s website: “a strong ale brewed with generous amounts of rich malt, coupled with a taint of cinnamon and mace to keep you warm and toasted all winter long.” Nothing really sticks out from this minimal description. Basically, it sounds like a a generic Christmas ale description which leads us to believe there might not be a lot going on with this.
(For clarification purposes, we took the above quote directly from the website. Therefore “taint of cinnamon” is actually how this beer is described, which is awesome and hilarious.)
REFLECTIONS
Beard & Broad
Beard: I will preface this by stating that I hate brown ales. I find them boring and they pretty much all taste the same. Ever heard a person say, “man, this is an amazing brown ale!”? No you haven’t, because it doesn’t happen. That being said, this tastes like a brown ale to me that had a handful of spices thrown into it. I will say this, I do like the amount of spice. I get just a subtle hint of cinnamon and slight chocolate malt, I just wish they were in a different beer. Definitely doesn’t taste like 8% either, so good work there.
Broad: This is not what I want to drink. I don’t taste any spices in this. I taste a strong, brown ale. As you know, not a fan of brown ales. I don’t have much to say about this other than, I don’t want to drink anymore of this.
Adam & Alex
Adam: This does what a lot of these breweries in our series seem to be doing: putting cinnamon and cloves in an ale and calling it Christmas. Forgettable and bland.
Alex: This beer is super boring. I agree that it feels like they threw some spices in a brown ale. Not a big fan.
Mez & Sam
Mez: I like the festive ale more than Sam. I think the smokiness gives it good depth and does make me want to come back for another sip. My knock on it is that it’s almost generic. Nothing felt overly unique, outside of the smokiness, but that’s not enough for me to give this a real high grade.
Sam: Eh. Nothing special to me with a bit of a smoky taste. Everytime I sipped it, that’s what I got. Not to say that’s bad, but wasn’t something that made me want to keep coming back for more.
