By Christmas standards, it’s not a long tradition, but naming your beer after a seasonal song has become, well, habitual, anyway. Double Mountain selected the refrain from Deck the Halls:
Fa La La La La. A nice, ecumenical choice, but one has to ask what some of these lyrics really mean. “Troll the ancient yuletide carol”? Can you troll a carol? But I digress.
For those visiting Oregon from lands where they believe we only make extremely hoppy, intense beers, Fa La La La La (”Fa” hereafter) would tend to seem like good evidence. It is a beer characterized first, middle, and last by the copious additions of Centennial hops. But here’s the thing, sometimes crazy hopping makes for lovely beer. A couple weeks ago, I went through Hood River and picked up a growler of Fa. Back in Portland, I poured a bit out into winter goblets for folks. Uniformly, they took one whiff and started smiling. A tipple and they kept smiling. There’s something so fresh about the beer that it’s irresistible—like a freshly cut Doug Fir sitting in front of the roaring fire. Great stuff.
Brief stats: Brewed with organic Pilsner and Munich malt, imported crystal malts, and Centennial hops. 7.6% ABV, 83 BU
Over at Beervana, I rate my beers with a letter grade. One could make the argument that this is a straight A beer, but I tend to grade low to give breweries a chance to tinker and tweak up their score. Call this a very Oregonian A-.
I voted for this one in Concordia's Snow Brawl blind tasting (despite it was a "winter beer" tasting and this being the clear hoppy outlier). It was just a more complete, integrated, better beer than the others.
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