Samuel Adams White Christmas:
Greetings one and all and welcome to our first Christmas beer of the year.  Yes, it’s that time again when the jingle of sleigh bells resound across the snow fallen country side and commercials remind us that the only way to show our affection is through material goods (and that started somewhere in Mid-October).  Also what kicks in during the season is that incessant playing of Christmas carols and running them so far into the ground that they discover oil.  So why not start off a beer review with a beer who’s name is that of one of the most famous carol of them all: White Christmas.  This brew from Samuel Adams is a non-traditional (for the season) unfiltered white ale that uses “holiday spices including cinnamon, nutmeg, and orange peel” to give this beer a taste of the holidays.  The beer pours a very hazy blonde color that produces a bone white head that dissipates down to a slight film and no lacing with a nose of wheat, subtle spices and hints of citrus.  The beer’s initial taste is that of a creamy wheat beer that allows some of the spice notes to pop up on mid tongue and the hops create a citrus back end and a slight dry after taste.  Not bad but honestly, I think that wheat beers- filtered or unfiltered- get over used in the mid-major beer market and the spices of this beer would have been much more welcome in an amber or maybe even a stout rather than an unfiltered wheat.   Still, not bad but it feels like we’ve done this already and nothing is surprising, just safe.