12 Beers of Tartan DAY 2 ANCHOR STEAM ANNUAL CHRISTMAS ALE

This is the naughty bad (big) boy beer that would have notably been excluded from Santa's doubly scrutinized list of domestically docile "acceptable boring obeying good little boy beers" with the exception that it knocked ol' Kris Kringle off his reindeer-driven pony Keg ass. This is the 39th consecutive year the San Francisco based-brewery has a released a limited edition holiday ale. Like our good friends' from Goose Island three hours north, Anchor Brewery alters the recipe of their holiday brew every year, offering continental craft beer connoisseurs across the snow globe with the annual gift of a new label and the transitory taste of a year gone pabst (sic), the promise of what it is to come with every sentimental swig this indelible libation willfully avails.

Here is why this beer is just fucking amazing:

Black as peasants' coal, it looks like Scrooge's overturned Dickensian  top hat when it is poured. It has a fluffed-licorice flavored petite peppermint  aftertaste that lingers on the rooftop of your palate long after St. Nick has scraped shingles off the top of your subdivision. It is pinched with spices and hop heavy on the alcoholic content caliber. In a nod to Good King Guinness-ceslas, it if light and heavy all at the same time, reflecting how I feel about the holiday clime, light and airy with the dalliance of yuletide, heavy and bruising with fleeting memories of yesterday. I had this beer early in the tour (say  around thanksgiving) and then had a few more last Saturday when my dear friend Gavra Lynn (who alchemically concocts a mean Bloody Mary)and I felt exactly the same, I poured the beer and held the glass up to the loops of pine festively festooned above the bar, brandishing my beer like a conductor brandishes a baton prior to the annual holiday showing of the Beer drinkers nutcracker ( a bunch of middle age overweight lads flouncing around stage with their shirts off to the music of   Tchaikovsky) feeling like I was about ready to conduct a timeless orchestral movement, not realizing that the symphony was sifting eloquently in my mouth with every sip of this ornate holiday brew.