I can never understand the obsession with Santa Claus. Since this is the right time of year and since associating products with Christmas is lazy but effective marketing, there’s no sense in fighting it.

See? Lazy marketing, and I fell for it.

This is my review of Rogue Santa’s Private Reserve Ale. Go ahead and pretend I drove 2 1/2 hours north just to take this photo.

Even as a kid it seemed a dubious task: one extremely obese man flies around the world delivering presents to all the good girls and boys on a single night. As an adult, unless Santa Claus holds the key to traveling between time and space it’s downright impossible. Besides, what does he do with the other 364 days out of the year? For one thing, Santa is actually an avid shooter. Here is a photo of him at the 2016 Las Vegas Shot Show:

“You may think there’s no such thing as Santa…”

He also spends his time in the summer riding the open road. Here he is at the annual Sturgis rally:

“…But as for me and grandpa, we believe.”

Santa has a lot going for him, and since he is a pretty high profile guy crisscrossing international airspace every year, the good folks at NORAD track his every move. Even if they started tracking him by accident, its once again proof there is nothing left to cut.

In previous years, this beer was a pretty standard winter lager. There was nothing wrong with it, and Rogue probably managed to sell every ounce of the stuff. Despite this, they determined that 2017 would be the year they change it up. Maybe they got tired of people comparing it to Sam Adams Winter Lager or the overall market saturation this time of year with winter lager-I don’t know.

Whatever the reason it was a good move, as the result is something much better in my opinion. It is now a Belgian-style ale. It is very fragrant, with notes of sour fruit. They list cherry and raspberry specifically. It is definitely a malty beer, but the tartness counters the overall sweetness nicely. Like everything else this time of year, it only comes once so find it while you still can. Unless you are the type that thinks Scrooge got soft and the Grinch was a poser, you’ll enjoy this. Rogue Santa’s Private Reserve 2017: 4.5/5

And if you do think Scrooge got soft and the Grinch was a poser, here’s some girls at Sturgis peddling Jack Daniels:

Merry Christmas!