As you will quickly learn, there are two loves in my life: football and beer.  They usually go hand and hand in my house on Saturdays and Sundays in the fall.  As the NFL opened their season a couple of weeks ago, and colleges went into the second week of their schedule at the same time, I felt it was finally time to start drinking some fall seasonal beers.  You will also see that I prefer seasonal brews. What is the fun of having something available 24/7/365?  If McDonald's sold the Shamrock shake all year long, would you crave them as much as you do in March? Please don't even get me started about Girl Scout cookies. But, back to football and seasonal beers.

I spent my Saturday night watching my Florida Gators quickly dispose of UAB while I had the pleasure of savoring Life and Limb.  This beer is a collaboration between two of my favorite breweries, Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada.  This is a dark beer brewed with maple syrup (Dogfish Head's contribution) and birch syrup (Sierra Nevada's contribution).  Birch and maple also had me excited because those are two flavors I associate with my youth; my grandfather loved birch beer and I remember my family always having maple syrup around from our vacations to Vermont.  When I first heard these two micro brew giants got together to make a beer, I figured it had a to be a hop monster, much like their flagship brews (Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale and Dogfish Head's 60 minute IPA).  I was wrong in my assumption (I think there is some famous saying about what happens when you assume).  This beer is pitch black as it poured from the bottle, but had the great inviting aroma of winter flavors.  Upon tasting the beer I tasted the birch syrup flavors up front and the maple flavors came on towards the finish. The beer had enough hops to keep the beer from becoming sweet and dominated by the two syrups.  If I had any criticism here it was that I drank this beer too early in the fall/winter season.  This beer needs to be imbibed on a cool, grey winter day while outside or inside watching a football game being played in a blizzard. Thus I have reason to purchase a second bottle if I can find one. This is a very limited release beer: check with your local ABC store ASAP and buy one because these will not be on the shelves for long.

On Monday night, I didn't know what I wanted to drink while I watched the Dolphins open their season.  My fridge is already full of pumpkin beers, but I wasn't in a pumpkin mood.  I saw a beer order come into our Palm Beach Gardens store today with a case of Abita's Pecan Harvest Ale on it and the light bulb went off in my head.  I have always loved Abita's regular brews, but have little experience with their seasonal stuff.  This beer comes out of the bottle with a classic golden brown beer color.  It drinks very easy with some caramel and woodsy flavors.  If you are expecting roasted pecans or pecan pralines in a glass, this is not the beer for you.  If you like brown ales such as Newcastle, this is a perfect beer for you.  The beer had nutty aromas and flavors, much like meat smoked over the wood from pecan trees would have.   This was a perfect beer for what I wanted, easy drinking with plenty of flavor and character.  Now I just need to hope that my Dolphins will bring me as much pleasure as this beer did.

Keep your glasses half full,
Evan

Beer blogger Evan Kaye is the store manager at our Palm Beach Gardens store.