Sweetwater Festive Ale
wax-finished, swing-topped bottle...how charmingly inconvenient! And in the amusing, family-sized 33.8 fluid ounce serving, as well..love it! Appearance: dark, full blackness, with a cocoa-tinged ring of foam atop. Aroma: nuts and cocoa, rich and full. Taste: again, chocolate and nuts, some dark fruits, but not too complex. Very full with flavor, with strains of spices asserting themselves later on...Rustic-feeling, brimming with cocoa and dark fruits, just short of actually delicious, but every bit very, very good. I echo previous commentator's notes about a resemblance to Anchor's holiday offering, but it lacks the particular piney, sprucey, tree influence, and manages to stand on it's own, without that component. Very tasty ale, very admirable, rich and full in body, but a nice, mellow, dark-fruity finish...and no particular flavors poisoning it's appeal to the average Joe...unless A.J. needs only fizzy yellow crap, but I'm off-message now, and I'll just enjoy this for the duration....this is a very nice diversion from all the *^% one endures in the wintertime, especially those of us us here in the states where we feel the weather on multitudinal levels...I congratulate Sweetwater for not only creating this beer, but for packaging it in such a unique fashion. As a holiday-style beer, though, it's just all-righty.