Commentist Beer Barrel: Winter Is Yummy

Winter is the best season for drinking, as everyone knows. In the winter, whether you favor wine, spirits, or beer, you can drink any of the things you normally like to drink, which by default makes it no worse than any other season. But! On top of that, you’ll spend whole weekends eating rich and hearty foods that fairly demand you pair them with your richest and heartiest red wines, whiskeys, ciders, eggnogs. You can snuggle into one or two or six of your warmest and softest blankets in the evening and drink hard beverages purpose-built not just to make you feel warmer, but to make you actually warmer; hot toddies, mulled wines, a billion boozy variations on hot chocolate and hot coffee. And the beers! Oh, the beers you’ll drink this winter!

I’ve never been able to get any commercial brewer to admit to this, but I know in my heart and my liver that it’s true: Breweries release their finest brews in the winter and slack off the whole rest of the year. Winter brings us imperial stouts, barleywines, old ales, and coffee beers en masse. Pumpkin beers finally get the fuck off the shelves. Sierra Nevada releases Celebration, the beer I look forward to more than any other seasonal every year. Anchor Brewing drops Our Special Ale, a winter warmer that’s always comfortingly familiar despite using a new recipe every year, and they sell some of it in great big bottles that you can drink on your own or share with, like, eight people, depending on how thirsty and how sociable you’re feeling. And Lagunitas Brewing of Petaluma, California puts out one of the quintessential holiday malt bombs, Brown Shugga’; except for that one year they didn’t.

In 2011, Lagunitas hit a snag in preparing to brew their usual holiday ale. Apparently they’d allocated a lot of tank space to meet demand for their IPA and Pils, counting on the delivery of new brewhouse equipment that didn’t quite show up on time. Or something. My research budget ran out before I could confirm the details. At any rate, on realizing they couldn’t possibly brew a batch of Brown Shugga’, which takes its good sweet time aging, they did the only thing they could do: They brewed a quick and dirty IPA, labeled it Lagunitas Sucks as an abject apology, got instant rave reviews for it, and quickly committed to selling it year-round, proving that even winter IPAs are the best IPAs. I almost reviewed Lagunitas Sucks today, but I wanted to drink Brown Shugga’ more. It’s nice to have the choice again.

Now, in the course of writing the early part of this review, I had the idea to try something I’ve never done before: Drink a beer hot, like a mulled wine. And… okay, I just said “in the course of writing the early part of this review,” but the truth is that before I got started, lady snow heated up some Pedernales Glögg with raisins and almonds in it, and it was delicious, maybe even more delicious than Pedernales Glögg is at room temperature, that’s really what gave me the idea. But anyway, I put four ounces of Brown Shugga’ in a measuring glass and heated it in my microwave, then poured it into a snifter. I did this before drinking the beer in the usual fashion, because I didn’t want to end on a low note if it went wrong, but let me tell you: It went way wronger than I ever imagined it would. It tasted like a double vodka and hot garbage. I couldn’t even bring myself to buttchug it. I dumped that shit straight down the drain. Life is too short.

Served at something like the proper temperature, though, Brown Shugga’ is a sweet, spicy, and boozy treat. It has its origins in a “ruined” batch of Lagunitas Gnarleywine to which the brewers added a whole bunch of literal brown sugar—at Lagunitas, delicious fuckup begets delicious fuckup on and on and ad infinitum, and after the experimental first batch, popular demand dictated that Brown Shugga’ would return annually. Now, just about every Lagunitas brew has some noticeable hop character, and Brown Shugga’ is not an exception. Here, the hops are more herbal than anything, medicinal even, tempering what would otherwise probably be a cloyingly sweet malt base. At 9.8%, this is probably not the easiest of sippers, but this is the season to drink slowly, because it’s the season to drink some strong, sweet shit and drink it all day. Cheers, Commentists.

lady snow says: [napping]

Grade: This is really good. There are also a lot of winter beers I like more than this, but this may be the most winter beer. Get this when your heater’s out and you can hide under a thick blanket and set a six-pack on your coffee table and drink all six without getting up and call into work the next morning.

make it snow is an alot of beer who has tried more than 2,000 different beers in his life and can finally prove it. He poured two bottles of Brown Shugga’, ruined a third of a bottle in the microwave, and drank the rest. He hasn’t stopped drinking yet. Follow him on Untappd! He goes by pivonaut there.

Photo credit beersandears.com.