Left Hand Snow Bound Winter Ale

Formerly brewed at Left Hand Brewing Co.
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Longmont, Colorado USA

Shared with Mr. Facto, CaptainCougar, & 1FastSTi. 22 oz bottle. Poured clear with a port like color and a light head. The aroma was all clove and allspice. Strong. The flavor also was dominated by allspice. That spice was layered all though the malt body of this lightly sweet brew. Medium body that had a mineral quality to its slickness. Not my favorite but I think I’ve discovered I don’t like allspice in my beer.

Bottle. Pours a dark amber color with a longlasting off-white head. Roasted spicy ginger aroma. Malty spicy flavor with some hints of citrus. Long spicy malty finish.

Rating for Left Hand XXXmas Ale

A creamy, cream-colored head lasts forever and sheet-laces above a clear yet thick copper body. Festive aromas, clove, licorice, mincemeat, cinnamon stick, prune, golden apple... sweet, spicy & lush. Smooth, sweet malts begin the flavor with a cloy. Dry spicing follows quickly and lingers. A flat, honeyed, syrupy presence does not dissipate the flavors, so they simply ’’hang’’ in the gullet while sugars coat the mouth. I warm up to the package as I get further along the bottle as spices play and linger. But, rather like Christmas itself, this beer’s promises of festivity and joy soon wear out their welcome.

<font size=-4>From an old notebook. Bottle was a gift from <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/View-User-14352.htm&g last autumn.<font size=-1>

Bomber. Poured a lovely translucent reddish-amber with a short cap of beige head. The aroma picked up cola, honey, and caramel sweetness with black pepper, clove, and cinnamon spicage.. warm, inviting, and holiday-ey. The flavor was along those same lines, with mostly drawn caramel at the core and unbalanced spiciness around the edges (pepper, coriander, and cinnamon.. with cloves right at the back).. perhaps some darker/more complex malt backbone would have supported this better. Medium-bodied and a bit sharp on the palate with the spices.. overall a decent beer.

Bottle sampled at Issac Newton’s. Pours amber/brown with a decent size off-white head. Aroma of fruit, spices, and slightly toasted chocolate malts. The flavor is spicey, semi-sweet, toasted caramel and chocolate malts, and small traces of bitter hops. Decent brew.

Dark mahogany pour with orange tints. Thin off white head, receding quickly down to a well retained thin and creamy top. Aroma is of sweet caramel malts, slightly scorched coriander, allspice, nutmeg, clove, banana pudding, orange zest and hints of brown sugar. Flavor is sticky sweet malts that near cloying. Spicing is muddled together, indiscernable now. A touch of hop bitterness pokes out. Toasted malts aplenty. An odd addition of pumpkin seed flavor creeps slowly in, very earthy. Cinnamon is noted as well. Palate is sticky, medium to medium-full bodied. Finishes spicy, pretty soft, with a delicate balance of dryness/sweetness.

With the chilling embrace of Colorado’s 2006 Christmas miracle still clogging the highways and residential roads, and no sign of a concerted angioplasty to clear paths, I headed down to my refrigerator to make a toast. The snow was inevitable, unavoidable and heavy, and if it was going to invite itself to my home I might as well drink to its honor and be done with the formality. Seizing on the pun I chose the bottle of Snowbound I had from my box of seasonal brews and held the label art up to my front door. It had become a very familiar scene in the last couple of days. But somewhere I was glad for it. The snow had pressed neighbors together, and brought one man to his fellow man in an admirable display of brotherly love which sunny conditions would deign to bring about. Also, it is great fun to throw someone shorter than you into a six foot snow drift and watch them struggle to get out. So a toast it was; a kind of commemoration to a vast white misery for anything that wanted to go somewhere, and an underlying nod of approval for all the good things it did and does. Left Hand’s Snow Bound is a very Janus-faced beer, I think, where the first taste was anathematic to my buds, and each sip after that more agreeable. When I first gave it a try I thought I had sampled a bitter salad smoothie with all the nasty tongue curling greens that make up the mainstay of vegan arrogance. You know those spiny, purplish leaves that always show up in salads simply because they won some accolades from a dietician somewhere? It tasted like those, and sent a wave of disapproval through my body down to my toes. But successive sips of the dark and honey-orange beer proved to be sweeter and more appealing. Past the thick, dense and protective head, within that brew was a Yin-Yang chemistry where the flavor was at once bitter leaves and then sweet with spice. Saffron, nutmeg, brown sugar, cinnamon, chalk, celery seed conducted the drinker to a more dulcet part of the beer. The smell was by far the sweetest facet, practically fuming with redolent pumpkin pie, chai and a bucket load of other mixed spices. There’s a lot of New World trade in this bottle and the brewer’s make no attempt to hide it. A lot of enthusiasm and many empty spice canisters later they’ve produced a marvelously flavored beer that verges on excess, but it’s a dynamic drinking experience to be sure. Each sip exhibits a different dominant flavor, giving each spice a time slot to shine amongst its comrades in flavor. They’re compressed, bumping and pushing, vying for the top spot. The balance shifts with each motion of the glass, such that a simple swirl to accent a speech may change the composition of the beer entirely. Even though the spices are all contesting each other, brought together and residing in the same bottle, they all manage to find their place, much as my neighbors did as we stood helplessly stranded in our inclined cul-de-sac. But, qualities aside, I can always appreciate having a beer like this so perfectly matched to prevailing conditions of snow, ice and an imminent Christmas Eve.

2005 brew. .Bomber.. . Spicy aroma with cinnamon, cloves, allspice present. Hints of maltiness.. .. Clear, Dark brown pour with ruby hints. Not much head.. .. Sweet start with loads of typical holiday spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice. Citusry hints.. .. Medium-heavy body. Smooth carbonation.. .. Very "christmasy" in flavor - loads of spices. A decent sipping beer, would be tough to have more than one or 2 as the spices tend to overwhelm the palate.