AFFORDABILITY: Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome brew is a New Year's time classic, and though it's a whopping four bones for the big bottles and almost ten bucks for a four-pack of the regular sized bottles, New Year's only comes once upon a calendar. And 2010 is gonna be big, putting shit ass 2009 in the rear view mirror, and those stupid glasses with the year on it with it hopefully, at least for my lifetime. I will tolerate, in hopes for a better tomorrow. But if at the end of this year, I'm as fucking broke, broken and depleted, and lacking in faith (to the point I'm almost turning to the blind faith of religion to calm my skitter scatter fluttered brain waves), then fuck paying for this expensive ass beer. But again, I tolerate, in hopes for a change, because that's what the fuck a New Year is supposed to be, even though it's just an arbitrary replacing of one calendar on the nail in the wall with another one. 4 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: Sammy Smith be a tasty winter turn of the Greco-Roman calendar treat, ready to grapple with the demons of everyday life, or just at night under the blue moon, fighting my pigs, but not today because they haven't had any dumpster goodies in like a week and they might eat me because my wife keeps joking on how they'll eat me, but I think that's some manifest destiny shit, joking or not. A lady 20 miles from here got mauled by pigs last year in an ugly affair, and I try to keep my pigs happy so they don't eat me. The irony of it all is, ultimately, I'm gonna eat the fuck out of them. So yeah, Samuel Smith's Winter Welcoming brew dog makes me want to go out in the full moon in the 20 degrees night refracting the light back up from the snow still covering all the grounds of the compound, wake my pigs up out their nest (pigs build a nest out of straw very much similar to a bird's nest) and do some grappling, getting all Dan Gable on their punk pig pork ass. What pig has won a gold medal in wrestling, ever, even in the Special Olympics? None, that's who. Fucking pigs. 5 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: The Samuel Smith Winter Welcome label is a bright and festive one, purple with a bunch of colorful banner thangs going on all over, very much unlike the rest of Sammy Smith's label army, mostly boring limey style labels. The info blurb on the back label has a picture of horses belonging to Samuel Smith himself apparently, and how they use fuggle and golding hops to make the beer, which sounds like some Harry Potter bullshit to me. And inside the actual label is some strange barely drawn bloke on some 1950s era footstomping red motorcycle like a comedy movie child molester would drive, sitting outside a Tadcaster pub with a barely drawn wench all up in the doorway. I mean, labels are what they are, nothing special really because they just wrap around a beer bottle, but I guess I could look at this one at least a third of the way through the bottle, maybe longer if it was a 4-pack of smaller bottles. My weird sister actually split a 4-pack up of those, gave one to my mom, gave one to me and my wife, and gave one to her boyfriend, and the fourth one was gone already. She's a strange one that girl. 3 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Label says Samuel Smith in a diamond banner thing, also reading "The Old Brewery, Tadcaster" and claims to be the oldest brewery in Yorkshire. When I was in high school, there was a kid named Sammy Smith and one time I had snuck some Everclear and grape Kool-Aid into school in this snazzy bottle I had, like some old 1970s Thunderbird bottle looking shit with the strange prints and federal warnings that old school bottles always had. Sammy got invited into the bathroom by a mutual friend to slam the Everclear and grape Kool-Aid in a stall, huddled around the toilet like budding hobos, and Sammy took the last gulp and then slammed the bottle into the toilet. That kinda sucked, but I let it slide, because as a kid trying to get by in public high school, you have to pick your fights. And picking one in the bathroom while skipping class and drinking Everclear with other delinquents is not the best time to pick one. I would assume the Samuel Smith of Yorkshire, England, is probably not related to the Sammy Smith of Farmville, Virginia, so I will not hold my lost old bottle against them. 3 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: Sammy Smith Winter Welcome Warming Ale is a wonderful blast of holiday spirit, and my woodstove is doing nothing to cut the cold but the cinnamon sticks in the cast iron kettle on top make a nice smell, but it's a New Year and I can start a new job later this week and get my work on and hopefully my food stamp off (though I may lie for a couple months to ease the transition back into having to pay for my own bullshit all the time... all they do is ban you from having food stamps for a year and I don't see needing them again for at least a year) and move into a better future motherfuckers. 6 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 4 & 1/5 STARS!
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