Samuel Adams Holiday Porter

AFFORDABILITY: The Samuel Adams Holiday Porter came as part of a super-saver flavor pack of seasonal varieties, which was quite the affordable 12-pack, relatively speaking. The thing I never understand is why they don't also make these beers available separately, so that the sampler pack might lead to more Sam Adams business, instead of it being a limited time only thing, and with four types of 3 bottles each, you're invariably gonna be stuck with some shitty ass beers. I would never buy another 12-pack assortment of this beer, because of some of the other flavors, but still, the price was agreeable enough. 4 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: I thunk this a great beer and drank all of them out the 12-pack before anybody else could get one. I would buy many more of these and drank them quickly as well, not sharing any. It has the warm to my gut taste that my inner hobo respects, and the chocolate tint that my inner coffee fag has begrudgingly come to adore as well. I would drank a bunch of these, right now, had I had some, had I had some money for some, and had I not been sick for yet another spell of late 2009 germery, drinking as much of the odd herbal voodoo concoctions as my wife puts in front of me. But my body just doesn't repress illness like it used to. I think it's because I don't drink as much as I once used to. 5 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: One time, I watched a movie and a dude was chewing on a toothpick a whole lot while he was talking his shit, and I thought that a good style, so I started doing the same. But cheap ass toothpicks chew up, and when you're not doing nothing but walking along back roads for five hours a day, to the country store on Rt. 6 for a bottle of wine, and then back towards home, unless a pick-up truck with a smiling face, an empty seat, and some sort of adventure detours me, I didn't like chewing them up. So I started chewing wild lettuce stalks instead. I read one time on Erowid about making resin out of wild lettuce, but it seemed way too convoluted and time consuming for very little high, like smoking banana peels. But chewing on their stalks leaves a nice, pleasant tingle to my jawbone, especially when it's cold and the metal plate inside my face underneath my left eyeball gets all cold inside my face. 5 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Samuel Adams is such a common ass name, it could mean the sons of Presidents or it could mean fat black dudes who played for the Baltimore Ravens when they won the Super Bowl. The company puts forth a patriotic fervor, a friendly dude who was probably homeboys with Paul Revere before the bad times of fighting them red coats, pushing forth an ale for me to partake of and share stories of lusty wenches and the opium dens the chinamen keep in underground tunnels in their corner of town. The chinamen are well known for their underground tunnel systems in cities they transplant themselves too worldwide, for shuffling around kidnappees and to stay sneaky. In Mexico, they actually flushed them back into America with a fire that smoked their tunnels from the south and forced them all back into southern California. And that's how they built Chinatown in Los Angeles. 2 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: I have, ever since high school, made it a life habit to hate upon the Samuel Adams families of beers, mostly because of a couple of dumbass dudes in high school who were about it. When you are 16, you should not be about good beers, unless that means Corona. Underage drinking is about quantity, and large scale murals of Milwaukee's Best cans or bottles of Boone's Farm, not good beers, even if it is a sort of fake good beer in Samuel Adams. But I have to say, this Holiday Porter was a wonderful life type of thing, and it filled my blackened little soul with a touch of chocolate and an infusion of smiley face, even in the midst of massive defaults on all my financial obligations. I am sure the original Samuel Adams patriot dude would feel the same happiness, and then he'd help overthrow the evil rulers and install a new government, kind of like we all declared bankruptcy at the same time except we didn't have to wait seven years to get loans from each other because we were all in it together. I wish we could have some of that again. 4 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 4 STARS!