Fa La La La La, taken from the refrain of the Deck the Halls Christmas carol, is Double Mountain’s seasonal offering, where they have eschewed the typical dark and spiced brew, instead releasing a Centennial-hopped amber ale.  However, this one still sports a nicely rendered snow and, um, ‘hopcone’ flake adorned label.

This 500ml bottle pours a slightly hazy, medium copper amber colour, with a teeming tower of puffy, rocky, and somewhat creamy off-white head, which leaves some pleasant webbed snow rime lace around the glass as it slowly sinks away.

It smells of various green hop bitters, from piney to floral to herbal, straight off, with a nice lemon, blood orange, and white grapefruit citrus rind acerbity, gritty, grainy pale malt, an ethereal sense of the caramel malt that might have been, and a wee booziness. The taste is pungent and resinous piney, floral, and herbal hop bitters, grainy and lightly crackery pale malt, some strange berry fruitiness (almost cranberry-like), muddled citrus pith, and a hovering, but not quite alighting alcohol measure. The carbonation is nice and tame in its generally fluffy frothiness, the body on the low side of yer typical middleweight, and somewhat smooth, as it does well enough to fight through those bitter, bitter hops. It finishes oddly off-dry, that berry and citrus fruitiness really showing some lasting legs.

Yeah, you wouldn’t think that a hop-forward Pacific NW brewer of note would forgo their so-called bread and butter when considering how to best celebrate the holidays, huh? And Double Mountain surely does not, giving us a huge hoppy whack across all our doubting Thomas palates. This isn’t the beer that goes with the holiday baking – it’s the one that makes you forget all about that stuff.