12 Beers of Christmas: Troegs Mad Elf

Troegs Mad Elf

Know how you visit a city, have a good time and those memories stick with you forever whenever that city is mentioned? That's kind of how I feel when I visit a brewery, which I did a couple of weeks ago at Troegs in their new location at Hershey, PA. Beautiful, clean brewery and drinking their beer fresh from the tap realized that I've taken this brewery for granted, since it's close to home. No more! Mad Elf is their famous Christmas seasonal, a beer that celebrates the typical traits that Christmas beers have: high alcohol, sweet, spicy and a little crazy (or mad). This beer uses sweet and sour cherries and honey which come out huge in the taste. The Belgian Spicy Yeast is probably what makes this beer "mad." And the base malts, which include chocolate, give this beer one hell of a backbone. This beer is nothing to mess with at 11%, but it's a great beer to share with friends, especially if you're crazy enough to buy an enormous bottle of it to bring to a party (like me).

Overall Rating: A- (10 Lords-a-leaping)