CulturAle Press

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS #5:  Saranac Rudy’s Spiced Christmas Ale; F.X. Matt, Utica, New York

Date:  December 29, 2018

The Story—  This is an Ex Post Facto (sorry) entry for the fifth of our 12 beers of Christmas.   Find earlier posts with these links:  first, second, third, fourth,

The Story— We attended college in nearby Clinton, New York, and that’s where we learned to both appreciate beer and to savor the differences between different brands and styles.  Other than the occasional renegade fling like Matt’s Maximus Super (called by nearly everyone who experienced it “Maximus Stupor”) beers were pretty much beer, differentiated for most drinkers by brand loyalty and price.  By the end of freshman year, though, I could tell the difference between Utica Club’s Cream Ale and Genesee’s.   for the record, Utica Club’s version had a bit more taste, was cleaner, and left you much happier the next morning.

FX Matt was a large regional brewery at the time, at one point running breweries in Florida and the West as well as its four million barrel plant in Utica.   But its flagship Utica Club lager suffered from the same tilted playing field that doomed so many other regional stalwarts.  Anheuser Busch waged war against Miller and Schlitz and the victims were the small guys who couldn’t match the cut rate prices.

Somehow FX Matt hung on.  Matts, a premium lager, was a cut above the big boys’s yellow suds and Utica Club had enough local loyalty to keep the brewery from going under.   It’s salvation came after a series of major contract players such as Sam Adams and Brooklyn brewery used the enormous excess capacity to brew beers for the emerging craft market.   Eventually the Matt family got smart and re-branded themselves as Saranac, brewing beers of their own similar to those that they had been brewing for others.   The timing was perfect and now Matt/Saranac had the advantage of economies of scale as their enormous 500 barrel brew kettles could churn out all the respectable craftish beers they could sell.

Saranac continues to produce beers that challenge the notion that breweries have to have small kettles to make good beer.   They won’t produce a Goose Island Bourbon Country, but their big strong dark ales give it a run for the money– and some of the seasonal beers are genuine bargains. One of the best is a fresh hop beer featuring local hops picked by volunteers.    Rudy’s Spiced Christmas Ale is another beer that could masquerade as a product of a much smaller brewery.

The Beer—  There’s metal to the malt and some floral notes suggest honey.  Spices are very mild.  Not earthshaking, and won’t challenge Anchor or a bevy of other craft brewers, but for a couple of bucks you can celebrate well at a fraction of the cost of some of the others

Value —  Very good.   A great beer to take to a party with people who are going to talk more and think less about what they’re drinking.   It will neither embarrass you nor break your bank account.

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!!   Through January 6th (Twelfth Night) we’ll give your this year’s list of the 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.”