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Beer Advent Calendar – Day 9: Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale presented by Seacoast Beverage Lab

@SeacoastBevLab

Beer Advent Calendar – Day 9: Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale presented by Seacoast Beverage Lab

To celebrate the Holiday Season, 2Beerguys.com and Seacoastbeveragelab.com have teamed up with beer bloggers around the country to host the first annual beer bloggers advent calendar. This is the season of sharing and we intend to share our love of beer with you. 31Bloggers Blogging – click here for the running list of beers/bloggers.

• Blogger: Brian from Seacoast Beverage Lab
• Website: http://seacoastbeveragelab.com/

• Beer: Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale
• Brewery: Lagunitas Brewing Co.
• Website: http://www.lagunitas.com/

Commercial Description:
This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feared BrownShugga’ Ale. You see we had a couple of really good years (thank you very much) and so heading into this season while we are awaiting the January delivery of a new brewhouse we are jammin’ along brewing 80 barrels of IPA and PILS and such every 3 hours.

A couple of months back we realized that since we can only brew a mere 60 barrels of Shugga’ every 5 hours, that we were seriously screwed. For every case of Shugga’ brewed, we’d short 3 cases of our favorite daily beers. It’s a drag. This year, we brewed something that we think is also cool and brews more like our daily brews. The new brewhouse will help insure this kind of failure never happens again. It’s a mess that we can not brew our BrownShugga’ this year and we suck for not doing it. There is nothing cool about screwing this up this badly and we know it. Maybe we can sue our own sorry selves. There is no joy in our hearts this holiday and the best we can hope for is a quick and merciful end. F*@& us. This totally blows. Whatever. We freaking munch moldy donkey butt and we just want it to be all over…

So this substitute beer is a ‘Cereal Medley’ of Barley, Rye, Wheat, and Oats…. Full of complexishness from the 4 grains, and weighing in at 7.85% abv, Then joyously dry-hopped for that big aroma and resinous hop flavor.

Details:

• Style: American Strong Ale
• ABV: 7.85%
• Bitterness: 63 IBUs

Why I selected the Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale:

New Hampshire has great beer but due to the crazy NH beer laws you can not get a lot of great beer at the stores. Sometimes it is all in a name. Enter Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale.

You can find some Lagunitas in my town but you won’t find this one because of ‘sucks’ and, quiet frankly, that sucks, because this beer is excellent. From the citrusy bitterness to the syrupy finish,
nothing sucks about this beer. This beer puts you in the holiday spirit with the Santa sugar cookie on the label. Don’t be fooled by the cute label, because this beer has some good bite.

I rave on and on about having stouts and porters in the winter. This is for those who want to shake it up a little for the holidays. I’m not saying ditch the 6-pack of stout when heading to a holiday party,
but I’m saying get 6 bottles of this to go a long with the stouts.

This is on the top of my holiday beer list this season. Let me know what you think of it. Those in portsmouth have to cross state lines to get it but it is well worth it.

About the Seacoast Beverage Lab:

Brian’s blog, Seacoast Beverage Lab started in March, 2010 and ever sense then his love for craft bee has grown exponentially. He went out to Portland, OR for the 2011 Beer Bloggers Conference and made great connections and met new blogging friends. Brian is currently working with the guys over at @2beerguys to put on the 2012 Portsmouth Beer Week. http://seacoastbeveragelab.com/

About Lagunitas Brewing Company:
From our earliest days of striving to make consistently good beer, and instead making beer that ranged from vile, to barely drinkable, to wonderful, to elegant, to questionable-at-best. From being castigated by our West Marin neighbors to finally suffering an ‘eviction’ by our West Marin septic system. From landing in the welcoming arms of Petaluma, and actually getting our beer into bottles, onto the streets, and into the hands of sympathatic beer geeks, to steadily losing less money each month. From all this and more, Lagunitas Brewing Company is emerging as a battle-tested brewery capable of making great beer out of goat’s milk, brambles, and asphalt on the surface of the Moon, if need be.

As the poet once said, ‘Where, but for the grace of God and the kindness of strangers, go I’. Where go we indeed, whatever that means. http://www.lagunitas.com