This week’s Beer Barrel is a sort of mystery. The facts are simple enough: At the store on Friday, I stumbled on a bottle of beer that had been marked down from its usual price of $10.50 to a mere $5.99. I immediately had to know why, because this was maybe the deepest discount I’ve ever seen on beer at retail, and today you’ll all get to watch me try to figure out the answer.

The beer is 5 Stones Home for the Holidays, and so you’ll already be thinking of one possible reason for the discount: This beer’s out of season by at least three and a half months. I like 5 Stones Artisan Brewery a lot. They’ve got a little facility in Cibolo, Texas, just northeast of San Antonio, and they’re a creative bunch; a couple of my favorite 5 Stones Beers are a pinapple-jalapeño ale (some of which they later aged on tequila-soaked oak chips to delicious effect) and a “golden stout,” literally a strong blonde ale that used coffee and chocolate to mimic the taste of a real stout. This one’s evidently Thanksgiving-themed, brewed and/or fermented with cranberries, cinnamon, and orange peel. Under ordinary circumstances I’d have every reason to come into this with high expectations, but of course, this is no ordinary 5 Stones beer; it’s a 5 Stones beer I bought for just over half price. Let’s see what I’ve gotten myself into.

Home for the Holidays is a light burnt orange beer with, as far as I can tell, nothing wrong with it at all. It hasn’t gone sour or developed a thick cloud of yeast sediment or become noticably oxidized the way that really old beers do. If any of its flavors have faded, they’ve probably done so for the better. The cranberries aren’t overwhelming, which is a huge relief because honestly I can’t get behind a beer that aggressively features cranberries. Cinnamon is also at a fairly low level, but it gives the beer a tiny bit of bite, and that’s nice. Orange peel is fairly prevalent and a good balance for the cranberries, and the base beer is a nice little saison-type ale light and spicy. This is good! My best guess, and really my only guess, at what happened here is that the store had this sitting around for a while and had to clear the space for something new. That’s a fairly boring end to this mystery, but a good result as far as I’m concerned. How about lady snow, though?

lady snow says: It reminds me of Thanksgiving leftovers.

make it snow: How fitting! And, everyone, I had no idea that yeah right was doing turkey leftovers this afternoon, and you’ll just have to trust me on that. 

lady snow says: It reminds me of when you make a sandwich the day after Thanksgiving, with turkey and cranberry sauce and stuffing. This is making me wish it were fall again. It gives me that feeling when you just want to sit down by a fire and eat delicious food. It’s a very hearth-and-home kind of beer.

make it snow says: I think the Danes call that feeling hygge.

lady snow says: I like that.

make it snow says: Can you think of any reason this beer was marked down by four and a half dollars, other than being out of season?

lady snow says: I can’t. Not even one.

tl;dr: We get it, snow, you got a deal on a beer.

Grade: Happy Thanksgiving, DFO!

make it snow is an alot of beer and YouTube video watcher. He drank about twenty ounces of Home for the Holidays for this review, and lady snow drank the rest.