{"id":7574,"date":"2018-01-18T15:22:07","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T21:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/?p=7574"},"modified":"2018-02-28T17:21:38","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T23:21:38","slug":"12-beers-of-christmas-2017-11-upslope-christmas-ale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/golf\/lifestyle\/7574\/12-beers-of-christmas-2017-11-upslope-christmas-ale","title":{"rendered":"12 Beers of Christmas 2017 \u2013 11: Upslope Christmas Ale"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Upslope Christmas Ale was the one brew I requested for this season\u2019s 12 Beers of Christmas<\/strong>. Luckily, the Boulder, Colorado brewery sent me two cans. Because when I was in the midst of the Cold That Wouldn\u2019t Die (Or So It Seemed), I had a can of the Christmas Ale and it struck me as absolutely flavorless.<\/p>\n\"Upslope<\/a>\n

Now I can see just how far gone I was, since this is one of the more flavorful beers of the entire 2017 crop. Just to be on the safe side I asked my wife to stick her nose in the glass and she pounced on \u201cClove,\u201d without hesitation. It\u2019s there, all right, although I found it more pronounced in the flavor than the aroma. I picked up some plum or raisin, caramel, vanilla, ginger and cinnamon. None of it overwhelming, all swirling together quite invitingly.<\/p>\n

The flavor is just as alluring, tilted toward a Belgian-style strong ale to be sure, with an Abbey yeast, though less sweet than often typical in Belgian Christmas ales. A dark brown beer with ruby highlights and a lightly tan head, this is actually one of the better balanced spiced ales I\u2019ve had, with all of the perfumy spicing, caramel sweet malts and a lightly bitter finish playing in great harmony. There\u2019s little evidence of the alcohol, so maybe it\u2019s just as well this isn\u2019t in an oversized cork bottle. It just tastes that way. But I sure wish I hadn\u2019t squandered that first can.<\/p>\n

I requested the Upslope because I wasn\u2019t likely to find any nearby; it\u2019s distributed only in five western states, lucky for them. I\u2019d heard good things about the brewery\u2014the little we hear about small Colorado breweries here in the east.<\/p>\n\"Upslope<\/a>\n

Not that Upslope is that small anymore. It was founded in late 2008 and after a few skimpy years took off like a rocket, by 2016 producing more than 30,000 barrels a year. It\u2019s always had an outdoorsy and environmental bent, putting all of its products into cans, easier to stuff into your backpack and recycle. That included an additional holiday beer this year, a Wild Christmas Ale aged in rye barrels with a sour culture, refermented on black raspberries, and eventually squeezed into 19.2-ounce cans.<\/p>\n

Sounds alluring, but I didn\u2019t get to try that one. It was part of what the brewery calls its Lee Hill series which, along with its Tap Room Series, takes in the one-offs brewed out of Upslope\u2019s two Boulder locations. The Christmas Ale first appeared in 2009, based on an old homebrew recipe of Upslope founder Matt Cutter.<\/p>\n

\"Upslope<\/a>There are five year-round Upslope beers, including a highly touted 6.7% ABV Brown Ale, and a 4.8% Craft Lager designated as a 1% brew, meaning one percent of all profits go directly to Trout Unlimited<\/a>. One of the conservation group\u2019s purviews is keeping waters running clean, so it\u2019s a natural for Upslope, which lists its first ingredient on the Christmas Ale can as: snowmelt.<\/p>\n

Name: Christmas Ale
\nBrewer: Upslope Brewing Co., Boulder, Colorado
\nStyle: Spiced Dubbel
\nABV: 8.2%
\nAvailability: Mid-October through December in CO, WY, AZ, NM, MT
\nFor More Information: www.upslopebrewing.com<\/p>\n

[Jan. 18, 2018]<\/em><\/p>\n

< 12 Beers of Christmas 10: N\u00f8gne \u00d8 Special Holiday Ale<\/a>
\n12 Beers of Christmas 12: Mikkeller Ris a la M\u2019ale<\/a> ><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Upslope Christmas Ale was the one brew I requested for this season\u2019s 12 Beers of Christmas. Luckily, the Boulder,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":7576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[939,627,18],"tags":[277,1002722,1013431,1016651,1016652,1016653,1016654,1016655,1016656],"class_list":["post-7574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beer-on-tap","category-tap-beer-of-the-week","category-lifestyle","tag-colorado","tag-12-beers-of-christmas","tag-christmas-ale","tag-upslope-brewing-co","tag-boulder","tag-trout-unlimited","tag-matt-cutter","tag-wild-christmas-ale","tag-snowmelt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/01\/Upslope-snow-2.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574","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=7574"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7590,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7574\/revisions\/7590"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/tombedell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}