So tonight I am going to be blogging about my first seasonal beer. Seasonal beers are usually trying to catch the seasonal tastes; a great example of this is pumpkin beer. Of which I am not a particularly large fan of, but they are released around fall and try to capture all that is awesome about fall into a beer. Since I am not a big fan of pumpkin beer, which many fall seasonals tend to be, I picked up Cigar City’s Sugar Plum Brown, which is their Christmas beer.
Now I am going to preface this in saying that it doesn’t feel like winter to me, seeing as I am in Miami, and it’s still in the mid 80’s every day. But, here we go- The label is pretty cool, it screams winter seasonal, with the letters sitting in a bed of snow, you almost forget this beer is brewed in Tampa, where there it never snows. The letters sugar plum are in purple, outlined in red (which I’ve always thought was a weird combo of colors) with Christmas lights strung about, there’s no question that I am drinking a beer crafted for the holidays. The bottle is an unoriginal long neck bottle, but Cigar City has gone to canning everything, so it’s kind of neat to see a Cigar City Beer in a bottle!
Onwards to beer! It pours a very dark brown, kind of clear if you hold it up and try hard to look through it. It’s got a nice finger high head, and I’ve been learning how to pour beer better out of the bottle, apparently I’ve been way to careful with it these last few. It’s got a crazy smell to it- it smells like plums, raisins, sour cherries, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg. This beer smells spicy. Not in a pepper, need to drink a whole glass of water type spicy, but in a spill your spice while making a pie and have way too much cinnamon type of spicy. That first drink is an interesting, it tastes pretty good, but it certainly is not a chugging beer, it’s one for the sippers. It is dominated by cinnamon and nutmeg, you can taste the sweetness of the sugar plum, but again, the nutmeg and cinnamon are dominating this spicy brew. It’s not quite as zesty as you’d think from the scent, but I’d say this is one of the ‘spiciest’ beers I’ve had in a long, long while. It tastes like it has more alcohol in it, but it only comes in at 5.5% which is kind of disappointing for those who like a good bang for your buck.
Judgment
Overall, this beer is extremely complex. I think everyone should try it if they want and if it sounds like something they’d enjoy. With that said, I don’t think I will seek it out again like I did this time. If it’s the holidays and I see it on the shelf maybe I’ll grab it if I don’t see anything else I want to try.
Let me know what you think and seriously, hand over those beer suggestions!!
Առողջութիւն!!
(Armenian for Cheers!)
Normal Guys' Guide to Beer 