Christmas Eve: The Day of the Beverage

My Christmas Eve, which is when myself and my immediate family celebrate, was fantastic. The day could be summed up in food and drink, and I shall share the drinking list with one and all. It's a sick combination of yumminess.

1. Arabian Mocha Sunani - Bought some new coffee beans this week. Wonderful, strong, but smooth beans these are. I brewed them in the french press. Have this chocolatey smoothness to them. Highly recommended. I rate these up there with my usual guatamalan antigua beans.
2. Elijah Craig Bourbon - I was in the mood for bourbon this week, but the combo of Christmas, and me just being a broke college student* kept my fundage low. So, I picked up this one. Excellent whiskey for the price. $17 for 750ml bottle. That's Jim Beam prices, but ten times better flavor.
3. Midas Touch - this is an extremely unique brew from Dogfishhead brewary. The story behind the brew is when archaeolgists discovered King Midas's tomb, they found large earthen casks in the burial chamber. They examined the remains, and figured out the ingrediants to the beverage in it. Dogfishhead brewary makes it. Its made with barley, honey, white muscat grapes, and saffron. Kind of a combo of beer, wine, and mead. Excellent beverage, but small doses only. Its a bit too sweet for my pallette, but for half a 12 oz bottle is exceptionally good.
4. Rasteau Vin Doux Naturel Appellation Rasteau Controlee (vintage 1999) - Whole label on the bottle is in french. All I know, is it was a dessert wine we drank between the appetizers and dinner. Like all dessert wines, very sweet, highly alcoholic. Not exactly my thing, but I'm all about the sampling of tasty beverages. I didn't think I wanted a second serving at first... but I went back.
   
5. Estancia Monterey Pinot Noir (vintage 2003) - More wine. This one was really good, but it was a more typical wine, which suits my tastes better. Not dry enough for me, but it complimented the meal nicely. I'm not exactly the wine guy, I just know it was good.
   
6. Kalamazoo Stout from Bell's Brewary - This was just a nice, dark, after dinner, pre-present opening drink between me and my brother (we both wanted a beer, so we split one.) Very dark. Very creamy smooth beer.
   
7. Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout brewed by Three Floyd's Brewary - I had been aging this bottle for a while. Its a rare brew done by a local brewary out here. It's brewed with Starbucks coffee and molasses. WOW. You can taste hints of the coffee in the background, but it doesn't overpower the flavor of a beer that is so dark light doesn't stand a chance of passing through it.
   

Now, one may wonder, how the HELL do you end up with a combo of beverages like that? Simple, me and my brother's all end up contributing a drink here and there. We all have much different tastes in what we like too. My callings are coffee, whiskeys, and beer. My oldest brother is a wine lover. The brother in between, beer.

So, I provided the coffee that everyone drank. Oldest brother brought two bottles of wine. Middle brother brought a few bottles of beer. So, in the end, you end up pretty buzzed on a wide variety of ways to get there. Now, I must drink water and hope that a hangover doesn't happen from this sick little variety.

*got my grades yesterday from my classes, thought I'd share with the world. Economics - B, Systems Analysis and Design - B, C++ Programming and Logic - A, Computer System Architecture - A, my idiotic and pointless math class that to this day I don't know what to call other than idiotic and pointless - B. So 2 A's and 3 B's.