Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Lagunitas Brewing Company Sucks Holiday Ale

Hello beer lovers and welcome to another edition of the NorCal Beer Blog's brew review.

Tonight’s featured beer is Lagunitas Brewing Company Sucks Holiday Ale.  When I heard Lagunitas wasn’t going to distribute their Brown Shugga’ Ale I wasn’t  sure what to do with myself.  Each year I eagerly await the coming of Brown Shugga’ (as well as other Lagunitas seasonals).  I was completely bummed out.  They announced the coming of their ‘Cereal Medley’ substitute beer so I kept an eye out on the shelves for its coming.
 From the Lagunitas Brewing Company website: “This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feard BrownShugga’ Ale. So this substitute beer is a ‘Cereal Medley’ of Barley, Rye, Wheat, and Oats…. Full of complexishness from the 4 grains, and weighing in at 7.6% ABV, Then joyously dry-hopped for that big aroma and resinous hop flavor.”
THE COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION
This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feared BrownShugga’ Ale. You see we had a couple of really good years (thank you very much) and so heading into this season while we are awaiting the January delivery of a new brewhouse we are jammin’ along brewing 80 barrels of IPA and PILS and such every 3 hours. A couple of months back we realized that since we can only brew a mere 60 barrels of Shugga’ every 5 hours, that we were seriously screwed. For every case of Shugga’ brewed, we’d short 3 cases of our favorite daily beers. It’s a drag. This year, we brewed something that we think is also cool and brews more like our daily brews. The new brewhouse will help insure this kind of failure never happens again. It’s a mess that we cannot brew our BrownShugga’ this year and we suck for not doing it. There is nothing cool about screwing this up this badly and we know it. Maybe we can sue our own sorry selves. There is no joy in our hearts this holiday and the best we can hope for is a quick and merciful end. F*@& us. This totally blows. Whatever. We freaking munch moldy donkey butt and we just want it to be all over...
So this substitute beer is a ‘Cereal Medley’ of Barley, Rye, Wheat, and Oats…. Full of complexishness from the 4 grains, and weighing in at 7.85% ABV, Then joyously dry-hopped for that big aroma and resinous hop flavor.
Let’s get started!
Appearance: Pours a golden amber with hardly any head and nice lacing.
Aroma: Huge pine and citrus hops with tropical fruits mixed in for good measure. Smells exactly as I would expect…perfect.
Taste: Well balanced – upfront malty magic mixed with incredible citrus and pine hop power.
Overall: My angst about Brown Shugga’ begins to fade as I sip. After all the disappointment about a season without Brown Shugga’ Lagunitas Brewing Company Sucks Holiday Ale comes in and soothes my sadness with another extremely strong brew. At 7.85% ABV I have sessioned this beer (at home) and up to today have purchased probably three cases with certainly more to come (before it is no longer in stores).  Although I REALLY want my Brown Shugga’…next season I hope they brew this one too. I’m A BIG fan!!!

Cheers!

Mark Harvey

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