Commentist Beer Barrel: You Deserve a Cookie

That’s right! You! Have a damn cookie. It’s been five days since New Year’s Day, which I think is long enough that I can now safely say it’s 2017. It wasn’t easy, but you made it. Beer helped, probably, but in the end, the credit belongs to you. Thanks to all of you, writers, podcasters, Commentists, lurkers, Moose, everybody, for making this the best site on the entire World Wide Web for professional-quality professional football dick jokes, and for giving me a place to ramble about whatever the hell beer I want.

So go on, have a cookie. Chocolate chip if you want, straight sugar cookie if you must, oatmeal raisin if what you really want is to punish yourself for the secret sins that only you, deep in your dark heart, know you’ve committed. For my part, I’ll be having some snickerdoodles, in my opinion the finest of the traditionally homemade cookies, courtesy of my parents who, in their infinite wisdom, baked far more cookies than they could possibly have eaten this Christmas. There’ll be beer, too, of course. The beer will also be snickerdoodles.

Yep.

The beer, as you probably saw above, is Snickerdoodle Ale, from Community Beer Company in Dallas, Texas. Community was just getting started during the ten months or so I lived and worked in the Dallas area. The first of their beers I ever drank was Public Ale, a spot-on extra special bitter. By the time I left town, they’d also released the excellent Mosaic IPA and Legion Imperial Stout; wood-aged versions of each have come out since and tasted just terrific. Other notable products are a great pale ale and session IPA, a couple decent abbey-style beers, and this.

Community Snickerdoodle Ale is a clear, golden-orange beer with fast-dissipating head. I could just tell you it does what it says on the tin, but that’s not giving Snickerdoodle Ale enough credit. What I love most of all about this beer is Community’s commitment to recreating the entire cookie, not just the cinnamon. The spice is there, and in just the right amount, but Snickerdoodle Ale really shows its chops in tasting just like baked cookie dough underneath all that spice. This isn’t Community’s first shot at turning a dessert into a beer; a while back they put out an awesome Funnel Cake Ale. But this does feel like their biggest accomplishment in dessert-flavored beer. It’s not exactly a complex beer, but who wants it to be? I’m in this for snickerdoodles, and snickerdoodles are what I got.

lady snow says: We should make beer bread out of this! It basically tastes like a snickerdoodle but with less sugar. Less sweetness.

make it snow says: I get that. The vanilla helps with the sweetness, but obviously kind of the point of beer is that the sugars get turned into alcohol by the yeast. How’s this compare to the actual cookie for you?

lady snow says: I love snickerdoodles, too, because I love cinnamon. My grandmother, when I was a little kid, would always make snickerdoodles and gingersnaps. This is an excellent representation of a snickerdoodle in beer form. I would say as a snickerdoodle aficionado, two thumbprint cookies up for this beer. Ten ladyfingers up?

Grade: You can’t buttchug a cookie. You can buttchug a cookie beer, but you shouldn’t.

tl;dr: Does what it says on the tin, but better than you’d have thought possible.

make it snow is an alot of beer and extremely real lawyer who wants to wish each and every one of you a Happy New Year! He had a picture for this post but he deleted it. Got a longtime favorite you’d like to see reviewed here in 2017? A bottle you’ve been eyeing but aren’t sure about? Yell at make it snow about it in the comments.