Brewologist | A nice Fireside Chat

• Fireside Chat is a winter spiced ale from 21st Amendment Brewery in California
• It weighs in at a solid 7.9 percent alcohol by volume and 45 International Bitterness Units
• Warming and flavorful, it is best served at close to cellar temperature
• The art on the can features FDR, but he did't brew the beer

Some beers just make you want to sip slowly by a hearth, in a room bathed in firelight and soft music.

One of those beers is the appropriately named Fireside Chat, a spicy winter ale from 21st Amendment Brewery, a creative enterprise based in San Francisco and named for the constitutional amendment that repealed Prohibition.

Fireside Chat is dubbed a winter spiced ale, and to my palate it seems to combine the characteristics of a brown ale and an English strong ale. In the glass, it definitely looks like a brown ale with its deep red-brown color and about a finger's worth of thick tan foam. It is on the boozy end of the scale for brown ales, though, at 7.9 percent alcohol by volume. It is a winter seasonal, best served not icy cold, and works well as a very nice winter warmer.

The slightly malty flavor is deepened with spices and cocoa nibs, but in a subtle way. The spice notes reminded me a bit of a good eggnog, and the malts had a bit of a nutty-toffee thing going on. The overall impression is a fairly rich, complex and deep taste in a fairly full bodied beer, with a bit of a nutty, spicy aroma.

Magnum and Goldings hops keep it all from being to sweet, and the beer weighs in at 45 International Bitterness Units, a good deal less than most India pale ales but hoppy enough to notice.

Fireside Chat would go well with toast or crackers and some sliced Gouda or Stilton cheese, or with some actual fireside chat with loved ones.

If the beer sounds intriguing, check the shelves at your favorite beer haunt soon. Brewed for winter, it won't be around for long.

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Fireside Chat was the showpiece, in my opinion, of a seasonal mixer of cans that included El Sully, a Mexican-style lager that didn't impress me more than anyone else's Mexican-style lager, but I am not a basic lager person. The other two beers in the pack were India Pale ales, one called Brew Free or Die, full of Columbus, Cascade and Centennial hops; and another called Blah Blah Blah and full of Chinook, Centennial, Mandarina Bavaria, Cascade, Equinox, Moteuka, Mosaic and  Citra hops. I preferred the latter, both for the beautiful flavor burst from all the hops varieties and for the humorous name and can design. Let's just say coming up with new ways to distinguish one brewery's IPA from another every couple of weeks isn't always easy.

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Both of those 21st Amendment IPAs are good, and I look forward to trying more of the brewery's product, but I warmed up to Fireside Chat the most.

Merry Christmas

This column is a small part of my duties for USA TODAY NETWORK-OHIO, and the news business being what it is, I may or may not be back with another column before Christmas. So, let me take this moment to wish you the best and safest of Christmases and to thank you for reading this column over the years. I hope you discover a wonderful brew or two over the holidays, and imbibe responsibly, of course. I also hope you'll drop me an email or a tweet and let me know about the good stuff.

If you'd like to suggest a beer for me to review, tell me I'm just plain wrong about your favorite brew or ask a beer question, feel free to tweet me; I'm @Brewologist. You can find Brewologist on Facebook and Pinterest, too.

Steve Goble is a producer for Media Network of Central Ohio. Email him at sgoble@gannett.com.