Spencer & Lynn

Beer Advent

2021

Once again, we had a blast putting together our annual Craft Beer Advent Calendar!!  We've thoughtfully chosen twenty-four of the best beers to enjoy in December 2021, and wrapped them up together as the best advent calendar ever:  one that surprises you with a new, limited, seasonal beer every day!  

We've represented many of the best cans and bottles coming from our amazing local craft beer scene, alongside some ancient, traditional brews from across the planet, and even included some new and unexpected flavors and styles as well.  With an array of IPAs, a smattering of sours, some crisp clean lagers, some way more obscure and nerdy lagers, plus all the roasty malty dark beers you could possibly want to keep you cozy throughout this holiday season... this year's selection is sure to delight any craft beer drinker, from novice to connoisseur.  

We thank you for joining us for our second annual Beer Advent Calendar, and invite you to sip along with these daily tasting notes that we’ve put together for each individual beer.  Once again for your convenience we saved the heaviest-hitters - those with alcohol contents over 7% - for the weekends.  We sincerely hope you enjoy these selected seasonal offerings as much as we really do too!!  

Cheers to you, cheers to craft beer, and cheers to the 2021 holidays!
Kim, James, Kelly, Jules, Jessica, Kathryn, Ashley, David & Pamela

La Brü Maíz Azul

Morelia, Mexico - 4.5% abv

Now here’s a beer unlike any you’ve ever had before!  Beer itself is pretty simple - water, malt, yeast, and hops - so if you start with alternative base ingredients, they’ll yield quite a different end result.  This brew doesn’t even look like your typical beer.  It pours not opaque but definitely hazy gold with a soapy bubbly head.  You’ll find aromas and flavors of sweet tea, biscuit, and floral notes, which keeps this comfortably within the realm of familiar beer characteristics.  Thanks to its bottle-conditioning, or second fermentation within the beer bottle itself, you get a unique, creamy, mouth filling effervescence and a nice yeasty finish with sweet bubble-gummy esters.  It’s so smooth and light-bodied, it drinks more like an iced tea than any other beer.  

Cerveceria La Bru joined Mexico’s Slow Food Community’s urgent initiative in 2015 to help preserve these ancient and unique Mexican crop cultivars that are sadly getting replaced by more modern varieties each year.  If these special plant species aren’t consciously saved through such efforts, they may slip into extinction like many others have before.  La Bru responsibly sources the native blue corn for their award-winning beer, farmed in the same ancestral method that the local people of the region have for over 7000 years.  In doing so they support biodiversity, and help generational producers gain organic certification.  If drinking a unique beverage like this  benefits such a great cause, we’ll gladly have another please!

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