Saturday 25 December 2010

The tenth beer of Christmas

The Bruery 2 Turtle Doves


A beer with a very fitting name for this post. I got this over a year ago from a little beer shop in San Francisco. As the story goes, our baggage went missing between flights on the way home and I thought I would never see this baby (along with others) again. But here it is.

From the brewery website you can see this beer is part of a series of seasonal beers. Made with 'turtle' candy, cocoa nibs, toasted pecans, caramelized sugar and a lot of caramelised malts. With an abv of 12%, i was a little excited about it, but didn't get too carried away after memories of being let down by many a random seasonal beer in the past. But this didn't fall short of expectations.

Honestly, this is a fucking exceptional beer. Thick deepbrown almost brown with big boozy alcohols, huge toasty malt depth and a very rich, kind of oily viscosity. Caramelised malt, dark chocolate and nutty grain all play in harmony with rounded warming alcohols.

As an after dinner beer it just begged for a cognac laced Christmas pudding. A great pairing. Think about it, raisins, nuts, rich sponge and congac notes that just echo on the boozy alcohols of the beer. As the tenth beer, this is probably the most memorable of the series so far, It totally takes the cake and is just perfect for the occasion of Christmas day.   

Merry Christmas everyone.

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