Beers of the Holidays: 2° Below

2° Below from New Belgium Brewing is one of my favourite holiday seasonals. Its not the traditional winter release that's overly strong and filled with exotic spices, its just a really good and easy drinking beer. Although the 6.6% ABV makes it way to high to be considered a session beer, that hasn't stopped me from treating it like one every winter. Aromas of sweet bready malts with floral and citrus hops. Toasted, sweet biscuity malt flavours with caramel and roasted nuts. However, there is also a strong enough hop presence to balance out all that sweetness with fruity citrus hop flavours to start giving way to a resinous dry finish.

When it was first released years ago, there was a very humorous posting and exchange in one of the forums on the Beer Advocate website where someone was madly searching for information regarding the new "Tupelo" beer from New Belgium. Nobody knew the beer they were talking about, leading to all sorts of wild speculation until someone finally figured out that Tupelo = 2 Below. Apparently that person had misheard the bartender say the name of the beer the night before. A few friends and I still refer to it by this alternate name in honour of that post.