For Want of Tryptophan

(Ok, I lied. This one is from a Thanksgiving tasting. )

I'm a southern boy at heart (look, I can't help the way I grew up anymore than you can help buying cheap wine every week) so my favorite holidays are ones centered around a meal. My ma's brothers and their families all live within a half mile of each other, on a bendy road in the part of Fluvanna we're hoping gets looked over (there aren't any lines on it yet, anyway) and, come next Thursday, we'll be eating, talking, and then falling asleep like families do. The ones where I come from, leastway.

Somewhere in Africa a child is crying, fatty.

Now, I wish that I could tell you that we'll all enjoy the beers you're tasting tonight, but much like I'm a beer guy in a wine shop (and from this perspective, a wine town I'm also a beer guy in a wine family. We'll drink "rye-zling" as my uncle calls it, maybe a "vig-ner," but beer? That's trashy. Nevermind the bottles are corked and caged, beautifully presented and drunk in wine glasses (yes, I drink Belgian styles in wine glasses) and that they arguably are more versatile to the meal. Beer is beer, and wine is better.

Dupont Saison 6.5% abv

We've tasted this before, sometime in the summer when I had first decided it was my favorite beer (and there's really no better way to while away an afternoon on the porch.) Perfect with "horse durves" (ok, nobody in my family actually says that) with high carbonation that scrubs the palate between crab cakes and cheese and those little hot dogs you have to poke out of the crockpot (you guys do that too, right?)


Unibroue Terrible 10.5% abv
After you're as stuffed as the poultry in front of you, and been told to quit burning rolls over the candles (that's it Charlie, no more candles for the chaps table!) and are trying unsuccessfuly to watch a football game that you don't care about, open this one. I promise that if you can get Aunt Lissa to have a glass she'll forget your pyromaniac tendencies, and you'll like that game a lot more.