You've Got beer Mail (Part 2)

We've heard Etan's side of our beer swap (below)—how it made him feel all naughty and such—so now it's my turn. For me, the fun began when I went to my mailbox to pick up a bunch of packages that had stacked up (it really makes the UPS Store grumpy). Amidst the usual assortment of promo CDs, boxes of beer samples and drop-directly-in-recycling-bin crapola was a giant friggin' Lava Lamp box. WTF? Since I didn't remember ordering a Lava Lamp, this struck me as odd.

Once I got the awkward thing home, it was the first box I opened. And there, cushioned by what seemed like the entire goddamn Sunday edition of the LA Times, was a 750ml bottle of The Bruery's Autumn Maple. Nice. Since I'd never had any of The Bruery's offerings, I was stoked to see this.

And there it sat in my "cellar" (a wine box in a kitchen cabinet) for the next few months, just waiting for the right occasion. Which turned out to be a playoff football game with four friends. Since I wasn't going to polish off 750ml of 10% ABV beer on my own, I figured I should share the wealth.

Though I had refrigerated it before the game, we let it warm up a little bit and poured it into red wine glasses (all that my buddy, Andrew, had). First sniff of the hazy medium-brown brew confirmed that, yes indeed, there were some yams in there. Though the pumpkin pie spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice—were also in there. Not much head to speak of, but I could have happily just sniffed this beer for a quarter or two. It smelled deee-liteful.

And it tasted just as good. Incredibly complex and well-balanced would be the best way to describe it. The spices, the Belgian yeast, the maple syrup, the molasses, the yams were all present, but perfectly integrated. I instantly regretted sharing this and reconsidered my assessment that drinking it alone would have been a bad thing. A great intro to The Bruery. I am a convert.

I've already sent Etan another box o' beer and am looking forward to seeing how he packages up his next shipment as much as the getting the beer itself.