Many people look forward to the holiday season due to the spirit of giving and while I can certainly appreciate this time of goodwill toward man, I also like the Christmas season for another important reason: The release of seasonal malt beverage products. One of several holiday seasonals I look forward to each year is St. Arnold Christmas Ale, a malty, lightly spiced ale.
Beer Bio:
Style: Seasonal Ale
Alcohol Level: 7% by Volume
Calories: Unknown
Carbs: Unknown
Looking at the basics, St. Arnold Christmas Ale is a malty brew with a copper color, a clear body, and a nose that offers hints of spice and malt. The foam level on this product is good and it holds its own as you consume.
St. Arnold Christmas Ale offers a taste that is malty and memorable, with the flavors of caramel malt, roasted malt, light nutmeg, allspice, and spicy hops. This beer actually tends toward the sweet side due to the generous addition of five different malts in the brewing process. It has a bitterness rating of 35 IBU, but the taste is still sweet overall.
St. Arnold Christmas Ale was the first seasonal product offered by Houston’s St. Arnold Brewery and it first hit the store shelves back in 1995. Like other Christmas seaonals, this beer features the taste of spice. However, unlike some holiday brew, St. Arnold Christmas Ale is not overly spiced, and this ranks among its many appeals. Many Christmas seasonal beer products take the spiciness to obscene levels, making them taste more like a holiday dessert than a bottle of beer. This St. Arnold product is actually balanced quite nicely, with a taste that is lightly spiced and bitter, but only briefly in the finish before returning to the taste of sweet malt in the finish.
St. Arnold makes a few seaonal beer products and St. Arnold Christmas Ale ranks among its best offerings. It presents one more reason to look forward to the holiday season, with a taste that is festive without going to extremes and a malt backbone that keeps it tasting like the malt beverage it was meant to be. The product has won a few awards in the strong ale category and it ranks as one of a few St. Arnold products that is fuller bodied and richer in taste, making it a good choice for the more serious student of fine brew.
Rating: 8 Cheers out of 10
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