Burnt resin complexion, blackened mocha-malt mouthfeel, toasted hop crest, and roasted barley backbone given brown-sugared honeyed tobacco lilt. Lacking expectant wintry seasonal spicing. Brewery defunct: 2002.

Strong sweet chocolate-wafted ale with loud raisin presence promptly backed by dry-hopped barley-roasted maple-sugared mocha malts. Secondary coffee-stained richness and heady wheat creaminess simmer down for complex, yet smooth, efficacy. Serve to brown ale fans.

Well-balanced cola-hued seasonal yields wintry cinnamon-nutmeg-gingerbread spicing above sweet sarsaparilla sufficiency and sugared fig-date-pecan illusions. Baker’s chocolate powdering and vanilla bean bittering coarsen residual dry-hopped vegetal earthiness.

Pleasant moderate-bodied amber-hued libation with red-orange-fruited waft and wispy lemony lime spritz eclipsed by Belgian-styled candi-sugared barley-toasted honey malting. Reedy earthen tea mildness persists above doughy bottom, but lack of expectant wintry spicing hurts.

Wintry-spiced brew with merry berry startup, soda pop fizz, Coca-Cola swallow, and unexpected clove seasoning needs more convincing finish since fruitiness dries up, sweetness subsides, and deflective acidic undercurrent baffles.

Subdued English-styled winter warmer trickles earthen red grape-cherry parchedness into wood-dried Chinook-Fuggle hops. Aloft cocoa malts, sour fig-date finish picks up slim apricot-banana tingle. Marginal twig-leaf tandem fills out thin tobacco backdrop.

Majestic Christmas-styled winter warmer with wafting gingerbread opulence illuminated by definitive honey-soaked brown-sugared cinnamon-clove-allspice-cardamom spicing and lickety-split licorice lollipop lob. Swooning alcohol buzz felt as tertiary orange-bruised banana snip thickens residual sugared medicinal warmth.

Transient frothy-headed amber-deepened ‘Old London Style’  fireside sipping winter ale lacks advertised richness. However, aromatic butternut sweetness, spicy hop bitterness, orange peel souring and sticky pine sap bottom fortify caramel-chocolate insurgence just fine.

Whimsical cinnamon-spiced treat perfect for post-breakfast (with a sticky bun). But like some misguided holiday ales, it loses focus. Instead of concentrating on cinnamon, ginger or nutmeg as the singular pronounced flavor, it dabbles in all and gets murky. Peculiar, yet daringly strong.

Boozy dark-spiced ’08 seasonal sprinkles cinnamon, nutmeg, and coriander atop brown chocolate sweetness. Prune-dried sugarplum-fig illusions sweeten molasses malts countering parched tobacco pinch.

Dubious seasonal brings nut-bread appeal to dried fig-peach swatch and funky vegetal wisp, but blandly sweet caramel malting finds no footing and lazy hazelnut finish lacks expected clove-nutmeg resolve. ’09 re-tasting: harsh honey-dripped cinnamon-toasted gingerbread seasoning receives bristly-hopped astringency.