I was fortunate to pick up a couple of (complimentary/marketing) winter seasonal beers this week from Worthy Brewing and McMenamins Old St. Francis School:

I stopped in at Worthy on Thursday after work to try the premier release of their new Powder Keg Winter Ale, a “winter IPA” that’s 7.1% abv, and ran into both my friend Lindsay Landgraf (Worthy’s social media and PR person) and Brewmaster Chad Kennedy. We chatted up beer and the local brewing scene and how you don’t see too many winter IPAs around these parts (or hop-forward seasonals in general, opting for more of the malty Winter Warmer style). Good stuff, and they made sure to provide me with a bottle to go (and Chad comped my beer). Will have more of a write-up on this.

And the Old St. Francis School’s Mike “Curly” White got in touch with me to offer up a growler sample of McMenamins’ annual Kris Kringle Yuletide Ale. I stopped by on Friday and in addition to the growler fill, Curly also sent me with the bottled version of Kris Kringle (brewed and bottled at the Edgefield in Troutdale) to compare and contrast. I haven’t yet tried this year’s batch but I do like Kris Kringle generally and of course the beer geek in me is excited to try both of these beers side-by-side. I’ll have a write-up of that as well.