Yesterday being the first Friday of the month means it’s time for The Session—and unfortunately, I’m a bit behind and didn’t get this post out for the actual day, but at least it’s the day after! Here in Bend it’s the Snowpocalypse™ has moved in, and it’s been snowing pretty steadily for the past 24-48 hours. We have about 18 inches of snow in the northeast part of town where I live, some reports in other areas claim three feet—the most snow Central Oregon’s had in years!

So snow and being snowed in is on my mind as I review the theme for this month’s Session. February is being hosted by Oliver over at Literature & Libation, and the topic he’s suggested is “Alternative” Reviews:

I ask all of you to review a beer. Any beer. Of your choosing even! There’s a catch though, just one eentsy, tiny rule that you have to adhere to: you cannot review the beer.

I know it sounds like the yeast finally got to my brain, but hear me out: I mean that you can’t write about SRM color, or mouthfeel, or head retention. Absolutely no discussion of malt backbones or hop profiles allowed. Lacing and aroma descriptions are right out. Don’t even think about rating the beer out of ten possible points.

But, to balance that, you can literally do anything else you want. I mean it. Go beernuts. Uncap your muse and let the beer guide your creativity.

So, “snow” on my mind and a bottle of 10 Barrel Brewing‘s Wino at hand, I decided to take a page from Stan and rip off be inspired by all of the other beer-in-the-snow (or “snowpocalypse” if you prefer) photos being posted online today, and present a photo review as my “alternate.”

(A quick bit of backstory: “Wino” doesn’t exist, officially—it’s the same beer as 10 Barrel’s “16 Barrels”, a wine-barrel-aged Belgian-style Double Golden Ale. Unfortunately, the TTB had issues with name and label of “Wino” for a beer and they had to change the name. Chris Cox of 10 Barrel was kind enough to give me a bottle when I was interviewing him for the book.)