December 7, 2023 | FEATURES | By Izzy Roe & Tia Peterson
Welcome back to yet another Beer for Babes! This week’s beer is a spiced Christmas ale called “Sleigh Queen!” from Crooked Stave Brewery. If you’re a real fan, you probably remember this brewery from the Mexican lager we tried a couple weeks back. These guys do such a great job with their brews we just had to come back for more.
Clocking in at 6.2% ABV, this beer went down surprisingly well. However, we will say the first sip made us nervous – the holiday spice gave us a quick flashback to the spice in the Cinnamon Dolce Nitro Stout (not great). But thankfully, as we continued to drink, it became quite enjoyable. It was honestly pretty mellow, and the spices ended up adding a festive touch.
This can reminded us of the “High School Musical” New Year’s Eve party: nostalgic. We’d like to make it very clear, we’re talking about the original movie, not the crappy TV show. This beer was a deep red and had the illusion of being sparkly. But unfortunately, we think the elders who made it probably got tired out from coming up with a “hip” name for this that they decided to call it quits when it came to designing the can.
Speaking of, let’s talk about this “hip” name – if you can’t tell, we went to Sunbutter after this and are using their absolute favorite line here – we assume it’s to connect with a younger audience. Interesting tactic, considering it’s an alcoholic beverage and you do in fact need to be 21 years old to buy it (and drink it – no rules are being broken here!).
Anyway, moving on to the taste; this did not taste like a beer that would be targeted at underage drinkers. This tasted like it had been through war. So many flavors and layers to it that can only come with age! Fair warning: it may only appeal to taste buds that have also been through war (like the cookie butter beer – yep, we’re still not over it).
The chug went shockingly well. I think we might be getting better at it after almost over a year of practice (we’re lying to not only ourselves but also to our faithful fans with this one). Despite the delightful chug, this beer strangely tastes a bit like soap after the fact. I don’t know if this was taken into consideration when they made it, but it is a good anti-chug tactic (advocating for responsible drinking here?).
At the end of the day, per usual, we did get drunk.