Christmas Eve NY (Evil Twin)

Sometimes I go into the total wines in northern Virginia and wonder how does a brewery go about standing out in this sea of 12oz brown beauties. The label is my first thought. You can choose some outlandish imagery on it, or perhaps some clever name that intimates something naughty. IPA's are classic for using marijuana imagery or stereotypes, often referred to as dank. Against the grain brewery, already with the brewery name, has one of my favorite names for a brown ale, brown note. They depict a guy on the label that, you guessed it, has apparently shit his tightey whiteys.

I love the Scandinavian type attitude of design that comes from Evil Twin brewing company.  Visit their website at http://eviltwin.dk/ and tell me that it doesn't inspire thoughts of Ikea's clean and simple design. The first page of the site is all of the current bottle and label designs. They even use mosaic style tiling to disguise the identity of certain individuals on their packaging. 

A co-worker of mine had Christmas Eve at a New York city hotel room last year, and I was hooked on that ridiculous name. For the same of time I will refer to it as Christmas Eve, which is a dark black stout. It is a stout that reminds me of what is at the core of the style, toasted malt. Not all the malt they use in this beer is as dark as the liquid but they blend different malts to build the body and convey the roast. Subtle hints of chocolate or coffee, but none added. All the flavor comes from the malt. It was a touch smokey which was nice. I may even go as far as to say maybe that is what fits in with the name?