This evening I will have some of Santa’s Private Reserve Ale brewed by Rogue Ales out of Newport, Oregon. The bottle says cryptically “snowflakes glisten”, a hint at this bottle’s easter egg which you’ll discover if you drink it on a dark winter’s night.
Santa’s Reserve is a red ale, a slightly beefier version of the Saint Rogue Red, which, incidentally, I’ve never really been a fan of. 
It pours a dark coppery red with a fair amount of tan head. Unfortunately the head is a bit swiss cheesy and doesn’t last very long. The aroma is rich with a strong hoppy character and a full maltiness. The hops come across as tropical fruit: pineapples and papaya with a hint of earthy pine, while the malt manifests as biscuits and toast.
This beer is initially bitter, with a spruce and pine hop flavor. The bitterness fades a bit revealing just a bit of caramel sweetness, which itself yields again to the spruce hop flavor. This herbal hop character lingers on the tip of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. If there were a bit more alcohol warming it would balance quite nicely, but as it is the herbal bitterness is just a bit too strong.
I quite like the nose on this one, but I’m afraid that the flavor doesn’t quite live up to the promise. Nevertheless, this is a drinkable winter warmer to enjoy on the cold, dark nights ahead.
Rogue Santa’s Private Reserve Ale
3.3 (3-8-6-3-13)
The French offering is called Gavroche, brewed by 
The bottle has easily the most interesting closure system I have seen in a while: it is corked with a mushrooming cork, like many Belgians, but instead of a thin wire cage to keep it in, there is one hefty wire bar across the top.
The other red I will have tonight is brewed by Brouwerij Van Steenberge for the 
Gavroche
Next, the marketing. The label and tap art is unique and interesting but also classy and consistent. The bottled beers come in those squat, round bottles you’d usually see holding a particular Jamaican beer (“hooray, beer!”), which makes them stand out just a little bit more. And above all, the team has done a great job of getting accounts in some important Iowa bars and retailers, making their beer highly available. I’ll talk more about this later.
It is in that vein that tonight I taste two beers that are named for local landmarks. The Red Rambler is an homage to the building the Peace Tree brewery is in, which in a former life was a Nash Rambler dealership. After that I’ll have the Black River Gumbo Stout, named for the rich black gumbo soil of the Des Moines River. This brewery actually has a beer named for dirt.
The Black River Gumbo Stout is, appropriately, a very dark beer, black to all but the brightest of lights. The ample creamy head is pale bronze color. The aroma is rich with roasted malts. A toasty, woody, even smoky character is offset by a rich and sweet nuttiness. Hazelnuts and walnuts are joined by plums before being overtaken by burnt bread. A deeply mesmerizing aroma.