December 22nd - New Holland Brewing Cabin Fever

Sorry for the lateness of this post tonight.  We just got home from a Christmas party for my wife's side of the family.  I was responsible tonight and played designated driver.  Water and food for this guy only tonight so far. 

HA!

So, on the eve of Festivus, we shall keep things semi-short, especially since I haven't gotten to start until now, which is close to 9:45PM. 

Going to dip into the fridge for a quick, cold option tonight for something easy to find locally for a review you can care about.  Well, maybe.

I pulled out the bottle of Cabin Fever from New Holland Brewing tonight that I planned on saving until there was a snow day or a day where I was stuck in the house for the entire day.  Then I'd have "cabin fever."  Since global warming has screwed up the snowfall forecast until what looks like at least until January here in central PA, I figured I could check this off my list of beers to save that I could write a fun back story about.

Not political, just funny...calm down

I've had a couple of the brews that this company makes before, according to my trusty Untappd app, and even this one back in January of 2014.  I gave it a 3.5 then, so let's see if that holds up.  For what it's worth, their DIPA, Hoptronix was a solid selection and you can't go wrong with Dragon's Milk.  I just recently upgraded my rating for the latter of the two since my tastes have adapted slightly towards the positive.  Tonight's choice is a 6.5% brown ale.

A dark brown, nearly opaque pour netted a pretty thick white/brown head at the top.  The aromas were that of nutty caramel with just a hint of chocolate malt in the background.  The flavor was a smooth, yet mild bitterness chock full of roasted chocolate malts and some toasted and nutty undertones.  The finish was on the dry side, still with a lingering mild hop bitterness that also left me with some chocolatey caramel on the backend of things.  An overall pleasant choice tonight.

I'm going to stand firm with my initial rating of 3.5 out of 5.  It is a good beer for the style and things are on point, but for a brown ale and me to really hit things off, there has to be a wow factor of some kind.  Give it a go if you find it!