This year's holiday brews, Ghost of Christmas Present

Every year I try to reach into my bag of beer related tricks and present you with the best beers of the season here in Indy. You can check out what we drank last year here. I'm really excited about 2013. We have some great brews for you to try. If you are looking for some great holiday brews to bring to a party this weekend, you've come to the right place. Tis the season for some awesome and super creative spiced brews. Show your friends you know your craft beer and break out something exciting. This year we have some new stuff to the area on Santa's wish list. I hope you find something perfect to get you and yours in the spirit.


There's been a local holiday delight that I haven't gotten around to trying, so this year I decided to give myself a present and pick up Naughty Claus by New Albanian. It poured out a nice amber color with almost no head. It smelled like cinnamon, nutmeg and dark fruits. There were tons of added flavors in this brew. All in, I wish it had a little more from the base beer. A bit more malt, would help balance out the crazy holiday spices. Not bad, but definitely not my favorite this season. I give it a 2.5



Every year in November, Three Floyds descends from Munster with a sack full of their Xmas Porter. This is a big black porter with a nice coffee flavor, but like all things FFF does, they smack you in the face right afterwords with some really big citrus hops. It gives it a super unique flavor that's somewhere between holiday porter and IPA. Like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, this has become a true holiday classic. I give it a 3.

Who wants to drink a Christmas tree???? I do!!! Last year I was lucky enough to do a vertical of Our Special Ale by Anchor Brewing. This year, I had to go pick up the 2013 edition. It pours out dark with amber highlights and smells like ginger, oranges and pine resin. The flavor matches the nose pretty damn well. There are some nice roasty notes in the malt that blend well with the hops and the added spices. Theres a big bittter front end with a nice smooth nutty spicy finish. It's a really good Christmas brew and I think it'll age nicely. I give it a 3 this year, but I'm guessing that will only go higher the longer I wait.


Southern Tier is a new brewery that we just started seeing here in Indy this summer (just started seeing again here in Central Indiana. Apparently they used to distribute here regularly and still distribute up North) . I've been very impressed with their beer so far, so I was excited to see that they had a Christmas style bomber, Krampus. I was even more excited when I found out that it was an imperial helles lager. There wasn't anything spiced, nothing changed, just an old school German style amped up with a little more alcohol. It was a wonderful malty beer. Perfect for the season without being spiced by non beer flavors. This is a clean crisp classic. Big abv but well balanced all around. I give it  a merry 3.5

Jolly Pumpkin is one that I haven't really tried enough of. They've been here in Indy for a bit, but they haven't really hit my radar. Everything these guys do is sour, so I'm really not sure how it took me this long to get on the Jolly Pumpkin bandwagon. Their holiday beer is Noel de Calabaza, and this is a nice dark sour beer with just a hint of holiday spice. Its got big tartness and dark fruit, like cherries plums and winter berries upfront with a really nice dry bret finish. These guys have really mastered the mix of wild yeast strains, which isn't easy. I give it a puckering 4


Like many Hoosiers, I spent Thanksgiving out of town with my in-laws. Lucky for me, my in-laws live in the Chicagoland area, and that means Revolution! I got my hands on a few six packs of Revolution's Fistmas. Fistmas is a spiced red ale that has all the flavors of Christmas packed into a delicious 12 oz can. It is perfectly spiced though, not too little not too much. El Duque had issues with the pumpkin beers because they're all so heavily spiced. This brew is the perfect blend of spice and base beer. Well done Revolution. If you can get up North pick up a sixer. Hell, get one for me too. I give this beer a 4.5


I'm a huge fan of the Prairie Bomb, so when I heard that Prairie had put out a wax topped Old Ale Christmas beer I had to go try it for myself. I love the big abv beers, especially if they can figure out how to balance them out. I wasn't disappointed. This thing was incredibly tasty. There was almost no hops, with a great malt bill that's perfectly spiced. Big dark fruits that verged on being a bit sour, played on top of a nice roasty malt flavor. The spices were really light and well balanced. Everything compliments the malts nicely. I believe that this is in fact the beer that will save Christmas for all of us! go get it while you can! I give it a joyous 4.5 and this was my favorite Christmas beer this year!

When you're getting set to go to a holiday party this weekend, take a little extra time in the beer aisle. Pass by some of the brews that you have all the time, and look for something festive. We have so many great breweries in town and even more great breweries who've started distributing here. Above are the beers that I really loved this season, go out and find what you love. Cheers!

Pumpkin Beer

My mom always told me to eat my vegetables, I just never thought they would taste so good in my beer. There are so many pumpkin beers out there right now that we figured we should do some in depth research and help you, our loyal followers, find the best of the best for your holiday season.

We decided to take thirteen pumpkin beers and a special surprise beer and do a blind taste test. We don't mess around with a blind taste test, we go all out and blindfold everyone who's drinking. Now this means you can't really judge the color or the head retention or lacing or anything visual; it forces you to focus on flavor. Next time we probably won't do so many because my taste buds were blown out!

When we rate for this, we do it on a 1-10 scale, so we can divide in half for our standard five point rating. The judging can be tough when we go this many beers in a row. You can see the scores on the white board below right.

We tried:

Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale, Jack-o by Curious Traveler, Jaques, Warlock by Southern Tier, Flat Jack by Flat 12, Schlafly Pumpkin Ale, Stella poured into a pumpkin, Hampton Pumpkin, Smashed by Shipyard, Spooky Tooth by Fat Heads, Pumpking by Southern Tier, Imperial Pumpkin Ale by Weyerbacher Brewing Co., Frogs Hallow by Hoppin Frog, Pumpkinstein by the Empty Can (homebrew).

It was a shit-ton of beer. Most of them were pretty good. The homebrew was a year old and would've been better fresh. The Stella poured into the pumpkin for a few hours was, as you might expect, less than awesome. I probably should have toasted the pumpkin or something. It mostly just tasted like cheap beer mixed with grass.

When I'm looking for a good pumpkin beer, I'm looking for one that has a great base beer with tasty pumpkin and pie spices. I love something that takes me back to being a kid and smelling pumpkin pie in the oven. I want a big, sweet, malt character and I really don't want a lot of hop bitterness.

My 3 favorites were:

Schlafly Pumpkin Ale

Spooky Tooth by Fat Heads

Flat Jack by Flat 12

I've been drinking so much Schlafly it would have shocked me if this didn't make my top three. It's soooo good. I picked up three six packs this year and have been pacing myself so I don't drink them all in one sitting. For me it hits all the critical flavors that a pumpkin beer should have. It's sweet but not too sweet. It's got awesome fall and pumpkin flavors that blend perfectly with the caramely, almost Oktoberfest-like, malt base. The pumpkin is mixed well with a lot of clove and just enough cinnamon and spice. I give it a solid 4 and I'll be first in line every year when this stuff comes out!

El Duque:
I realized now why I don't get super hyped about pumpkin beers.  Most of them are either mediocre or down right terrible.  There are so many flavors trying to be balanced out in a pumpkin brew that it is almost impossible to make this beer actually taste like it is beer and not some sweet, over-spiced mess.  I'll make my top 3 easy:

Schlafly Pumpkin Ale
Every other pumpkin beer
Your Mother

The silliness of the blind taste test and the social aspect of the taste test made the beers a little more tolerable for me, especially the skunked Stella soaked in a pumpkin.  I think pumpkin style ales have gone the way of American seasonal gimmicks like Oktoberfest, Irish Stouts, and "Summer Ales."  Some breweries (like Schlafly) will take on these dumb seasonals and knock them out of the park and make them tolerable, but most seem to let their beer be as interesting as doing punkin art in 3rd grade art class.

O-Dawg:
I tend to enjoy pumpkin beer as a seasonal treat each year.  Slogging through 14 rounds of them is not something I want to attempt again, especially when we had a few grenades thrown in for fun (shakes fist).  Loved the blind taste off because preconceived notions were tossed out.  I thought Southern Tier would make a better showing. We tried those early in the rounds and they didn't stand up to the competition well.  Top 3:

Weyerbacher Brewing Co.
Schlafly
Fat Heads

I think my pallet started to blow after the 10th.  El Duque started talking about Bazooka Joe and it was all down hill from there...  We really need to mic these up in the future.

The Little Lady:
I really enjoy pumpkin beers. They tend to be closer to the styles I gravitate towards. They're malty, roasty, and some have a nice spice profile that really feels like fall to me. If you look at the picture of the scoreboard you can see that my scores really didn't vary much from one beer to the next. That's mostly indicative of a general enjoyment, and waiting for something to really stand out from the crowd. Nothing really jumped out at me, but I still enjoyed the taste test. My top 3:

Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale
Flat Jack by Flat 12
Warlock by Southern Tier