Behind the Bar - Brewdog Santa Paws

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Author: Barmacral Tigana

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Christmas is on us and with it comes the many Christmas seasonal beers. So many in fact that I actually do my own beer advent calendar every year and I’ve barely scratched the surface of them all. For this month I’m going to keep it simple and review Santa Paws, a Christmas themed Scottish ale by Brewdog. There is a truly astounding array of Christmas beers out there though; the brewery I work at made a Belgian strong dark ale with the zest of 50 oranges added in, and at home I’ve made an American Dark ale with white chocolate and a vanilla bean. Anchor Brewing is known for their Christmas ale where they change the spices every year and have done so for decades. This is an amazing time of year for trying almost everything in the name of the holidays so even though I am only reviewing a single beer, go out and see what you can find. No doubt you’ll encounter something excellent.

Pouring very dark with a cream coloured head that lasts quite a while Santa Paws has a rich malty nose with hints of coffee. The flavour is also malty with heavy roasted character finishing it off, but at a low 4.5% alcohol it doesn’t pack a huge punch. The bottle claims it to be a Scotch ale but the strength of the beer is much too low for that, fitting stylistically more with the Scottish type ales. (The difference between scotch ale and Scottish ale is alcohol strength.)

Rating: 3/5 – The nose is promising but the flavour is weak and a bit of a letdown. This beer has a slightly watery character that you don’t want in anything that is supposed to be as full flavoured as this.

Beer Facts: Spiced beers

Spice in beer means many many things. Sometimes the yeast provides the spicy character (common in Belgian style beers), other times it is the hops, but often common especially around the holidays is adding other spices to beer. These can be many things from cloves to cardamom to cinnamon to spices that don’t start with the letter C. Pumpkin spice beers for example often contain allspice, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

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