{"id":3861,"date":"2012-12-30T22:55:04","date_gmt":"2012-12-31T04:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tombedell.com\/?p=3861"},"modified":"2015-12-12T20:28:50","modified_gmt":"2015-12-13T02:28:50","slug":"twelve-beers-of-christmas-11-magic-hat-wooly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/golf\/lifestyle\/3861\/twelve-beers-of-christmas-11-magic-hat-wooly","title":{"rendered":"Twelve Beers of Christmas 11: Magic Hat Wooly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Our penultimate Twelve Beers of Christmas choice looked good on paper\u2014a beer with a name and label suggesting ugly Christmas sweaters, and laced\u2014or rather knitted together\u2014with spruce. So I set it aside when the brewery sent me the beers that, along with the ubiquitous Magic Hat No. 9, make up its Winterland Variety 12-Pak: Wooly, Heart of Darkness Stout, and Encore IPA.<\/p>\n

I probably should have picked one of the others. Except No. 9, which I\u2019ve never liked.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a weird relationship with Magic Hat beers. I stopped buying them a long time ago after they stopped producing the Blind Faith IPA, the only beer they made I really enjoyed. The rest seemed bland, thin, highly underachieving and some, like the summer Wacko made with beet juice, downright hideous. There was some kind of house character that didn\u2019t appeal to me, and the whole act seemed more about marketing its Deadhead sensibility than making exciting beer.<\/p>\n

And that was before the company became part of the North American Breweries group, which as a whole seems even more driven by marketing and underachieving beers (if not sales).<\/p>\n

On the plus side, the brewery was willing to push stylistic boundaries and experiment a little, even if I didn\u2019t particularly care for the experiments. Then they started brewing Blind Faith again, part of a rotating IPA series which also seemed like a good idea. And now I notice, though have yet to try, a new Humdinger series of higher ABV seasonals.<\/p>\n

So along came Wooly which is, as intimated in yesterday\u2019s post<\/a>, the lowest percentage ABV beer in our 12-day survey, coming in at 4.5%. That\u2019s also on the low side for an ESB, but it would make the beer more drinkable in multiples if the spruce thing works for you, which it certainly might.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a drinkable beer\u2014not a Wacko\u2014but it didn\u2019t really work for me. To the pale, caramel and Munich malts the brewery went with Apollo and Northern Brewer hops before adding spruce flavoring toward the end of the boil. But the spruce dominates the aroma and flavor, without ever feeling fully integrated into a smooth whole as, say, Anchor\u2019s Christmas Ale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Stick with the other outliers of the Winterland Pak, the intriguing Encore, an American Wheat IPA (6.4% ABV), or the Heart of Darkness (5.7%), a nice roasty stout that we had at the tasting last night and which could work quite well in a winter warmer role.<\/p>\n

Name: Magic Hat Wooly
\nBrewer: Magic Hat Brewing Company, South Burlington, Vermont
\nStyle: Spiced\/Herbed ale
\nABV: 4.5%
\nAvailability: Mid-October to mid-January, part of the Winterland Variety Pak
\nFor More Information: www.magichat.net<\/p>\n

[Dec. 30, 2012]<\/em><\/p>\n

<Twelve Beers of Christmas 10: Otter Creek Winter Red Ale<\/a>
\nTwelve Beers of Christmas 12: Element Winter Ion<\/a>><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our penultimate Twelve Beers of Christmas choice looked good on paper\u2014a beer with a name and label suggesting ugly Christmas… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":3862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[939,18],"tags":[3430,708541,3759,708542,174722,676069,708534,708535,708536,708537,632,708538,749,708539,819,708540],"class_list":["post-3861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beer-on-tap","category-lifestyle","tag-spruce","tag-wacko","tag-spiced-ale","tag-winterland","tag-our-special-ale","tag-christmas-beers","tag-magic-hat","tag-no-9","tag-ugly-christmas-sweaters","tag-heart-of-darkness","tag-anchor","tag-blind-faith","tag-christmas","tag-wooly","tag-winter-seasonal","tag-north-american-breweries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2012\/12\/medium_12-Pack-Variety-Box-Cuto.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3861"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6366,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3861\/revisions\/6366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}