Blue Moon Winter Sample Pack 2014: Blue Moon Gingerbread Spiced Ale

Brewed By: Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin   

Purchased: 12oz bottle from the Blue Moon Winter Sampler 2014 bought at Jewel-Osco in Chicago, IL; 2014 

Style/ABV: Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer, 5.9%

Reported IBUs: 16

DAE Macro sampler packs?

Over the past few years of penning horrible blog reviews, I have never actually reviewed one of America's classic beers: Blue Moon Belgian White. I did review their god-awful Grand Cru once upon a time, but how about some of their more seminal releases? I couldn't pass up on the Winter Sampler Pack for 2014. This thing cost about $15, and comes with five unique beers. Well, five really, because who hasn't had the Belgian White? About MillerCoors aka Blue Moon:

Blue Moon was first brewed in 1995 at one of MillerCoors' R&D arms; in a sandlot, in Denver, Colorado, by Keith Villa. Keith Villa is an OG player these days. He's off judging beer, and talking about his PhD in brewing from the University of Brussels. There's a PhD for everything these days. Seriously though, it's Blue Moon. Read the Wiki. 

The Gingerbread Spiced Ale is a Winter seasonal brewed with Pale, Munich, Caramel, and Wheat malts; Hallertau hops; and some ginger, molasses, cinnamon, allspice,and nutmeg.  

The beer pours into a filtered, dark red body, that is nicely carbonated, and kicks up a finger of caramel-tinged head. This is a fine looking beer. Wooo.

Blue Moon Gingerbread Spiced Ale

It's hard to believe we just wrapped up with the onslaught of Halloween/Pumpkin beers, because this beer would fit right at home with all of those. This smells like any generic spiced beer: I'm getting big nutmeg, allspice, clove, and cinnamon. The cinnamon in this beer veers into the land of Big Red, which is either good or bad...I can't decide. Beneath all the spice is a layer of suggestive caramel malt base.

Wow...this basically tastes exactly like the aroma. This is super sweet, and basically unloads a bunch of nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon (with some faint Big Red) on this caramel-sweet malt backdrop. This is lacking in complexity, and pretty much just goes cookie sweet with the malts. But the cookie sweet malts work with this style of beer, and they do deliver a pretty effective gingerbread cookie into your mouth. 

I can sort of see the appeal to this beer. The cookie/caramel sweetness on the backdrop is pretty superficial, and despite being relatively moderately-full with good depth, this lacks complexity and nuance. But this is a "gingerbread spiced ale," and to that end it pretty much delivers what it promises. Up front: caramel, gingerbread, cookie-like malts, ginger spice and nutmeg; the mids roll into cinnamon, more nutmeg, clove, ginger, spice; the back end drops more cookie sweetness and spice, and finishes cloying and spicy. 

Rating: Average (3.0/5.0 Untappd)

I'm feeling a Light Average on this. I'm trying really hard to hate this beer, but it pretty much nails the gingerbread cookie thing. It's not very complex, and it's not very big, but this would work for me as a beer to pair with a Holiday meal (Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner), or with some pie. Honestly...not a bad effort from Blue Moon.

Random Thought: Serious question: what's the difference between Winter and Pumpkin spiced beers?