Beer, a tradition.

Like buying a book every Christmas season for myself, or more often books, K and I have a sort-of tradition of buying beers. Definitely plural. Specifically, winter beers. Ten years ago, we made a trip to a Total Wine & More while we were still in Puyallup and hand-picked a slew of winter beers. They're our favorite. Dark, heavy, and full of flavor. We did it again in 2016. Then we moved to Wenatchee in 2018.

What we've noticed since is that there are no winter beers to be found here. It's all IPAs. Okay, in the summer. Not okay in the winter. So on this last trip to Tacoma a couple weeks ago where I also picked up some books, we made our first trip back to Total Wine in apparently eight years. We were like kids in a candy store (okay, fifteen minutes prior to marveling at the half-an-aisle's-worth of winter ales, we literally were in a candy store at the Tacoma Mall, specifically See's Candies, another tradition). 

Yep, we scored.

It's fun to see our previous scores, from way back in 2014 and 2016.

The hard part? Making this stash of winter ales last through the end of February. Luckily, we can supplement with a couple we can actually find here in town, namely Jubelale (Costco) and Bifrost (the URM Cash and Carry where we also source our coffee and "00" flour for our wood-fired pizza crust).

Another tradition… sticking beers out in the snow on our back patio. It's snowing right now and supposed to snow much harder overnight, possibly a foot per hour in the mountains above. Right now, we have a couple beers chilling in the 33º temps. Happy Christmas!