It's the Winter Solstice! Okay, so it was at four o'clock this morning but who cares? After this, the nights will begin growing shorter and the days longer. Tonight's a night for keeping indoors, reading and listening to music, and staying warm and comfortable against the long dark without your home. A beer certainly wouldn't go amiss.

Since it's still the holiday season, I have a Christmas ale slated for tonight: Masthead's Robot Santa's Christmas Ale (Robot Santa from here on out). How is it? Well, I've had it before so I know. This'll be a fun mystery for you!

Masthead's based in Cleveland, OH. They're located downtown in a building on the National Register of Historic Places. They're "...known for [their words] our ever evolving lineup of juicy New England IPAs, Neapolitan-style pizza, and our barrel aged beer utilizing exclusively allocated whiskey barrels from top-rated distilleries."

Robot Santa's presence on the brewery's website is a link to Untappd, so we'll follow Masthead's lead here. Untappd lists the beer as a 7.6% Christmas ale that's brewed with ginger, honey, coriander, orange peel, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Seems to be standard stuff. You'd think the ale's name is a Futurama reference, but that doesn't seem to be the case. 

The bouquet here starts unassuming enough. Christmas spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger) with honey and orange kicking around. There's no hint of the ABV here. But, lurking beneath that all is something surprising (again, I've had the beer before but I promise that I was surprised by this when I first experienced it): smoky hotdog. It's something you'd find in a Rauchbier, not a straight-up Christmas beer. Purrl didn't seem to mind it so much, seeing as how she gave my can thirteen whiffs.

Every aspect of the nose carries through into the palate. The spices are subdued and the honey and orange are bolstered. These are quickly overshadowed by the smokiness, which is tempered by a return of the orange and honey but still lingers longest in the finish. There's a little booziness with the hotdog flavor at the end of each swig.

Robot Santa's mouthfeel is fine. It's sharp and a little nippy. It may shock you to hear that this ale drinks like an ale.

One food I've always associated with the holiday season is pigs in a blanket. Michelle and I used to get a pack of Lit'l Smokies and a tube of crescent roll dough and make a tray to split. I'd usually pair this with a Christmas ale or a glass of cranberry-flavored lemon-lime soda. This seasonally (for me) appropriate food is what I'm thinking about as I sit here, drinking tonight's beer.

My buddy gave me a four-pack of Robot Santa for my birthday in October (this can is the last that gift). I cracked the first one open and remarked that it tasted like hotdogs. He asked if that was good or bad, and I said it's good in a Rauchbier. The problem is, Masthead's Robot Santa's Christmas Ale isn't a Rauchbier; it's a Christmas ale. That smokiness, which Masthead doesn't mention anywhere, takes me out of the beer and the season, try as I might to associate it with Christmassy thoughts. I can't give this beer more than a 6.5/10. I don't recommend it (although I very much appreciate the gift of it!).