Lazy Boy Brewing is (I believe) a relatively new microbrewery out of Everett, Washington. If I’d heard of them before December, it was only in passing, but right around the beginning of that month I found a couple of bottles from them available here in Bend for the first time.

I grabbed their seasonal to try, Mistletoe Bliss. It’s brewed to the style of a Winter Warmer—their site says “brown ale on steroids”—and is 7.5% alcohol by volume.

Appearance: Brown-red with a touch of a haze… light beige head.

Smell: Candi sugar, caramel-nosed Crystal malts; sweet, almost cloying. Appetizingly so. And I’d almost say, fresh spruce?

Taste: Muddy blend of malts—roasted, Crystal (caramel), biscuit… none too distinct. Sometimes sweet, sometimes warm, with a note like it didn’t ferment completely. Hops are similarly indistinct—there’s hop bitterness, and an odd green vegetable thing going on, a little earthy and spicy—but beyond that nothing stands out. (Old hops?)

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied with a bit of an edge to it—carbonation perhaps—that’s a little harsh (or green).

Overall: Decent, but frankly it’s indistinct and reminds me more of a homebrew—a well-done one, to be sure, but unremarkable.

On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of B. On RateBeer, it scores 3.23 out of 5 and is in their 62nd percentile.