Tradition Festbier comes to North Americans via the 2015 Costco Beer Advent Calendar, so we of the faithful Advent sort don’t get to them until now – whatever, it’s technically the last day of autumn (the best kind of day of autumn!), so who cares if it’s just too damned cold for dirndls!

This 500ml can pours a clear, pale golden yellow colour, with three fat-ass fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly bone-white head, which leaves some attractive layered snow rime lace around the glass as it slowly recedes.

It smells of biscuity and grainy caramel malt, red apple skin, bar-top nuts, a twinge of gasohol, and plain earthy, leafy, and grassy noble hops. The taste is bready, doughy pale and caramel malt, some indistinct pome fruitiness, bland nutty notes, a suggestion of petrol astringency, and more mild earthy, weedy, and dead grassy hoppiness. The carbonation is fairly understated in its low-profile frothiness, the body a so-so medium weight, and mostly smooth, nothing really all that keen on messing about here, it would seem. It finishes trending sweet, the malt and vague fruit flavours holding onto the reins as this one romps off into that good night.

A simply rendered version of the style, with no real flaws or anything to specifically complain about (I’m just in that kind of mood right now). Easy to drink and easier to forget about as a packaging anomaly for this time of year. Prost!