Why I Oughta...

 My brother-in-laws have a thing going on with the annual Anchor Steam Christmas Ale that comes out every year.  And I've posted a little bit about the bottles each year.   This year, the beer was billed as :  "New tree. New recipe. Same holiday tradition."  Nat's brother Charlie tells me that they have a new head brewer - hence the changes.  He also said that this year is heavier (is that the right term?) alcohol. But, I'm mostly interested in the label.  Here's a look - below - at one of the bottles that Nat's Dad bought and stored for her brothers when they can make it.  They have a beer from every year back a number of years in this fridge. Three trees.  That's kinda interesting.  Turns out, that's new.  From the 2020 page : This year’s label features The Three Graces; three iconic towering sequoias from the Mariposa Grove in California’s Yosemite National Park. This is only the second time in its 46-year history that multi...

There are plenty of Christmas traditions that we participate in (trains, advent calendars, elfs, tree day, Walnut Room, etc), but there's also a beer tradition that I've grown to look forward to:  the opening of the annual Anchor Steam Christmas Ale as done by my brother-in-laws in Naperville. I've chronicled this in the past here on the blog.  Here's a post from last year's version .  Here's the 2015 version .  And here's a post from 2010 with that year's bottle .  And based on those posts, I've been drinking a little bit of this stuff for 10 years now, despite this only being the fourth version that I've documented on the blog here. As for this year's brew, they once again picked a unique tree for the label.  From the Anchor Steam site : This year’s tree is the Santa Lucia fir. Extremely rare, it is native and limited to California’s Santa Lucia Range along the central coast of California. They bought some smaller bottles like nor...

Behold, the hard-to-find 2016 Anchor Christmas Ale !  Nat's brothers are *really* into this stuff and they have a big to-do every Christmastime when one of them comes home from LA and the other one migrates to the Suburbs from the city.  And, I have to tell you...when it comes to traditions, this is one of the good ones! Each year, the fine folks at Anchor Steam come up with a new ale and tree on the label.  From their Christmas Ale page: It is sold only from early November to mid–January. The Ale's recipe is different every year—as is the tree on the label—but the intent with which we offer it remains the same: joy and celebration of the newness of life. Since ancient times, trees have symbolized the winter solstice when the earth, with its seasons, appears born anew. With a heavily guarded, secret recipe, Christmas Ale is a highly anticipated seasonal delight, complex and full in flavor with a velvety texture and alluring, yet subtle, spiced aroma. I've covered ...