- Chuao - Honeycomb bar - This is a dark chocolate bar with caramelized honey bits inside. The texture is similar to a crisp bar with rice, but there's a pretty subtle honey taste.
- Spiced apple squares with maple whipped cream - Brett made this for Christmas day and they are delicious. Recipe is here.
- Idahoan - Steakhouse bacon and ranch potatoes - We were looking for some quick potatoes as a side dish one night when we were busy. It clearly wouldn't be hard to make these on your own, but the quick convenience was nice and they were actually pretty tasty.
We have a number of beer tastes backlogged as well.
- Elysian Brewing - Bifröst Winter Ale - This was part of the last shipment of the beer of the month club Megan won. It was okay, but nothing too special.
- Founders Brewing - Breakfast Stout - This is one of the highest rated stouts on ratebeer.com, and rightly so. Brett just slightly prefers their Imperial Stout, but this is darn good.
- Elysian Brewing - Loser Pale Ale - This was the other selection from Elysian in the last shipment. It's very drinkable and went very well with dinner. Not the best pale ale, but certainly good.
- Anchor Brewing - Our Special Ale (2013) - This year's version was good but our notes were based solely on a small taster. We have a bottle to try at home, but this actually ages well so we might hold it to next year too.
- Brouwerij Corsendonk - Christmas Ale - Again, part of a tasting, but this was also pretty good.
- Sly Fox Brewing - Christmas Ale - This was also part of a tasting - a little too much clove for my taste, but it might age and mellow out.
- Mikkeller - Santas Little Helper (2013) - Another taster, this has an 11% alcohol content and it is clearly there in the taste. It's not overwhelming, but a nice winter warmer.
- Bell's Brewery - Cherry Stout - If you buy this, I hope you like cherry! Brett loves a fruit beer, especially cherry stout, but this is way overbalanced to the cherry side of things.
- New Belgium - Snow Day - Found this in the cellar, way past its "best by" date, but it was still very good.
- Brouwerij De Ranke - Père Noël
- Brouwerij Het Anker - Gouden Carolus Noël (Christmas) - Do you like anise/licorice? This is the beer for you! Good grief there's a lot of licorice flavor in this. People we talked to say that this did not taste like this last year.
- Perennial Artisan Ales - Fête de Noël - The flavor on this is reminiscent of a spiced rum - very warm and round in your mouth.
- Dubuisson - Bush de Noël (Scaldis Noël) - Surprisingly, flavors of toffee and caramel were prevalent in this.
- Liefmans - Fruitesse - We had a bottle of this in the cellar. It's a lambic blended with berries (strawberry and raspberry) and then some added sugar. To Brett, the added sugar made this too sweet and totally overwhelmed the tartness and farmyard flavors you would expect in a fruit lambic. Megan thought it wasn't too sweet and liked it quite a bit.
- Boston Beer Co - Samuel Adams Merry Maker - This is a gingerbread stout. On its own, it's flavor is a little too dominated by black coffee with the ginger and spices playing second fiddle. But, if you want to try something fun, pour 1 - 2 oz of good quality egg nog into a glass and add the stout. Leave plenty of head space as it's going to foam like crazy, but you know have a gingerbread-egg nog-stout shake which is delicious.
- Lagunitas Brewing Company - Lagunitas Sucks - Like many breweries today, Lagunitas cannot keep up with their demand, even though they've recently increased their brewing capacity. They did not have enough time to brew their regular holiday ale, so they instead brewed this. It's an American strong ale, brewed with 4 grains (barley, wheat, oats, rye) and then hopped to a reasonable 63 IBU. We believe they should just add this to their regular line-up!
We have over 100 wine tastings yet to add so we'll stop this post here and make one gigantic wine tasting post next.
