Now that the long Christmas weekend is behind us, it’s time to report on the beer-related bounty I obtained, as I do every year. This was a fun year and I got some great and unique beer-related fun.
My girlfriend’s parents got me a new bottle tree and pressure-powered bottle rinser. Any homebrewer who still bottles and knows the woes of trying to properly clean and dry bottles in the sink can appreciate my excitement over this gift. Now I just need to hurry up and have another brew day! My dad got me a subscription to All About Beer Magazine, which I am excited about (it’ll be nice to have some hardcopy beer news & reviews to read away from the computer every month); and my girlfriend’s aunt & uncle got me the two bottles of holiday beer you see pictured above (sorry its blurry, it was shot with a cell phone camera in low light). One of which is a bottle of St Bernardus Christmas ale and the shorter is a bottle of Ridgeway Santa’s Butt. They’re each wearing Beer Bottle Holiday Sweaters which apparently came from Reny’s (which shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve ever been to a Reny’s!).
And for giving (which is always better than receiving), I gave out twenty-two ounce bottles of my new holiday homebrew – a Belgian-style Holiday Ale brewed with Cinnamon and aged on a vanilla bean. I have to say, this was probably my favorite, and most well-received homebrew to date.
What did you get (or give) in your beer stockings this holiday?
6 Comments
Sounds like you had a great beer Christmas! I got some really cool glassware … and I gifted myself A LOT of awesome beer 🙂
Cheers!
lucky you! Glassware would have been great. I need a new widemouthed tulip glass!
I was gifted two Delirium Tremens glasses to help with my small but growing collection of glassware as well as a Chimay gift pack with a glass as well.
I’ll have to check out The St. Bernardus Christmas ale, I’m a bit fan of Abt 12
A homebrew kit with 5-gallon pot and ingredient kit (hell yes), The Naked Pint (book), and another year of BeerAdvocate magazine. No glassware this time. I need a bigger place to display them before I ask for any more 🙂
epic haul! What was the ingredient kit? And you’ll have to let me know what you think of The Naked Pint; I’ve been wanting to read it.
The ingredient kit I received was for Cream Ale, which I know is a “strange” kit to ask for but I have my reasons. I could have gone for an IPA or Pale Ale or Stout or Porter or etc etc etc kit, but I can get good… hell, great… “examples” of those types of beers (i.e. walk down to the local good beer store). I can not however regularly/easily get cream ale (even at the “corner” beer store). For a first beer I thought I should go for something I can not readily ascertain (the fact I can not compare it to anything else will probably help matters too). Granted I will get into brewing those other beers (a recent recipe in BeerAdvocate for a Saison really sounded good, and one can never have too much Saison) but for starters I’m going with the cream ale.
As for the book, I will definitely get back to you about it when I finish. As for now, the read is off to a good start.