{"id":1851,"date":"2008-11-21T00:27:46","date_gmt":"2008-11-21T04:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=1851"},"modified":"2008-11-21T00:30:06","modified_gmt":"2008-11-21T04:30:06","slug":"me-julio-part-4-christmas-is-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/21\/me-julio-part-4-christmas-is-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"Me & Julio Part 4: Christmas Is Coming"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Anchor<\/a>On the recommendations of a friend, I made a trip back to Julio’s last night to score a bottle of Anchor<\/a>‘s “Our Special Ale”, a.k.a. “Christmas Ale 2008<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

Actually, when I say “a bottle”, what I really mean is “one regular bottle for drinking now, and one magnum for taking home to share with the Boys”. (If you download their PDF flyer<\/a>, you can see the relative size of the magnum, if that’s not a size you’re familiar with.)<\/p>\n

It looks great when poured: a very dark red–almost black, but with the deep ruby translucence that separates a dark ale from a real opaque beer, and with a nice head.<\/p>\n

Out of the fridge there is almost no aroma, but as the glass warms the smells open up–a thick vanilla that’s almost caramel, and hints of spices.<\/p>\n

The beer is quite drinkable–a light mouth feel for something so dark, a lovely initial ale taste with a hint of sweetness, and then a gentle and lingering set of spices. I don’t know what spices are really there, but my best guess is some combination of cloves, cinnamon, maybe a bit of ginger, and a bit of oil from orange peel. At the very end, the aftertaste is clove and … something. I want to say “spruce” but that could be the label suggesting things to me.<\/p>\n

I had been lead to believe (by a beer-knowledgeable coworker) that the spice would be overpowering–comparisons to the intensity of hops in Dogfish Head’s 120 minute IPA<\/a> were made–but I don’t find them so at all. They are noticeable, but not overpowering, and certainly no one would describe the beer as “fragrant” which is often a pejorative when I use it.<\/p>\n

This is the best thing so far. I might even need to get another magnum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the recommendations of a friend, I made a trip back to Julio’s last night to score a bottle of Anchor‘s “Our Special Ale”, a.k.a. “Christmas Ale 2008“. Actually, when I say “a bottle”, what I really mean is “one regular bottle for drinking now, and one magnum for taking home to share with the Boys”. (If you download their… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[96,246,457,126],"class_list":["post-1851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-and-drink","category-reviews","tag-booze","tag-drinking","tag-reviews","tag-something-great","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-tR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1851"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1853,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions\/1853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}