CulturAle Press

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS #1:  Hardywood Park Christmas Morning, Richmond, Virginia

Date:  December 25 , 2018

The Story—  We’ve tasted this beer twice before at the Holiday Tastings at Mad Fox in Falls Church.   They’re wonderful events because the brewers themselves attend and talk about their beers.  Hardywood Park Brewery brought this beer in both 2014 and 2015 and we think we remember the brewer saying that the formula had been modified a bit.  We think they’ve tinkered with it since, but the essence of the beer remains true year after year.

When we tried to decide on a beer to kick off our 12 days of Christmas, the label said it all.   Fortunately, the beer ranks as one of our favorite holiday beers of all time.  Though we’ve tasted it before, we thought we’d procure a bottle to share on… Christmas morning as we wrote this post.   Should have gotten two.  We shared sort of nicely, but detoured a bit from the holiday spirit of giving.

Hardywood Park Brewery began in 2011 in Richmond, Va.  it’s located in the Scott’s Addition are which is now home to, depending on how you count them, about a dozen breweries.  They’ve expanded to a second Richmond location that focuses more on barrel aged beers and have a new outpost in Chancellorsville as well.

The Beer—  Don’t over chill this beer.   As it approaches fifty degrees, the coffee comes into its own in the aroma and does its remarkable balancing trick with the spices.  At that point, the spices with the rich dark sweet coffee, blend to suggest a spiced coffee rather than a coffee flavored spiced beer.  There’s plenty of malt in the taste — caramel with some roast, but it’s surprisingly lighthearted for a 9.2% powerhouse.   Lactose, at least in 2018, is very much under control and the chocolate and milk chocolate, while there, seem to be a bit more subdued than in previous years. Evident cinnamon brings just a candle’s flicker of heat, though there’s a sense that it would give more red hots if the chocolate, lactose and malts weren’t so up to the task of crown control.    It has enough IBUs for a hoppy American Pale Ale, but you’ll never find them in this in this cabinet of complexity.   Chewy with more hints of the gingerbread as it rests on the palate.  Ellie got more heat, with a bit of the flavor of hot pepper and more spice before the coffee and more booze throughout than I did.  From my point of view, what’s so big about 9.2% – it’s Christmas!!

Value —   Excellent.   An absolutely superb beer is hard to find at under $15 a bottle these days.   A half liter of this dark delight runs between six and seven bucks.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

It’s The Season!!   From now to January 6th (Twelfth Night) we’ll give your this year’s list of Twelve Beers of Christmas.  We’ve tasted close to 200 beers brewed for the season; they’re not all good elves, but a great many are as talented as Rudolph for getting us through a foggy winter’s night.

(We know, we promised a count down to the New Year with descriptions of some of our favorite beers from the last five years.   In those years we’ve published Drinking in the Culture, and gotten a good start on a drinking/sleeping guide to the Mid Atlantic and a guide to great beers is supposed “bad beer cities” — the tourist meccas of Europe. But goodness, Grinch, what about all the holiday beers??  So we’ll detour and pick up the top ten list in the new year.)

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is iour response to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”