smoking pipes!

On the eleventh day of Beermas I went and bought for me

Eleven pipes a-smoking

Ten horses leaping

Nine feet a-floating

Eight icicles dripping

Seven sea monsters swimming

Six owls nesting

Five malts of gold

Four avian hallucinations

Three French magicians

Two love ya dearlies

And the simplest answer there could be

I was looking for some help on this one, since it was coming down to the wire to have all the beers ready to go.  If you ask for a Christmasy beer, people have a lot of suggestions for you, but when you try to associate a song the ideas kind of dry up.  I get it, it's not the way most people relate to their beers most of the time.  I was guided to several Belgian beers, a couple of spicy IPAs, and then this gem appeared before my eyes: Garage Beer's Balanced On The C, a Barcelona weisse.  It was the pipes, of course.  That's the connection.  Perfect!

It's one of those peachy looking fruit-flavored beers, with a little dry/sour aroma.  It tastes something like a cranberry wine, well, really more cranberry champagne.  It has a tartness of flavor and dryness of feel, and practically disappears without a trace after you swallow.  The ginger takes a little while to come out, but eventually a nice snap comes through.  It's a party punch kind of beer, much less reliant on the sour aspect than more traditional style Berliner weisses, with a slight heat of spice that warms it up for a holiday evening.