If you're like me, and most of you are, you'll find that others are aware of your love of good beer. Of your desire for constant new and interesting varieties of beer.

And for most of you, this will mean that people give you beer.

Nice how that works out, huh?

I got a variety of different beer for Christmas. How about you guys? What did ya get?

My uncle brought a few different Russian and Armenian beers as well as a Czech beer. I also got a variety pack from a close friend of winter seasonals, the pack was based from a company in Oakland, CA so I ended up with largely local brews.

Erebuni and Kotayk were the Armenian brews. Erebuni was an okay European lager. Kotayk tasted a lot like Heineken which is okay, but there are far too many of those beers.

Zhiguiliovskoye was the Russian beer. Try saying that 3 times fast!

And Gold Bohemia Beer was the beer from Czecha. Decent pilsener. Nothing special.

To me, these beers were noticably superior to Asian beers, which makes sense since they're all from Europe (well, the region of Kotayk is in the middle of a country straddling Europe and Asian so I don't REALLY know...).

The variety pack had Lagunitas (that hoppy brewery), Bison (I used to live 2 blocks from them), Cooper's, Anderson Valley, Shipyard, Bridgeport, Mendocino (I met that brewer), Full Sail, Pyramid, and Big Sky breweries winter brews. Montana, Maine, Australia, 2 Oregon, and 5 Northern California brewing companies (Pyramid also does WA, but the Berkeley, CA brewery is bigger and I think it does the CA distribution).

I've had beers from all of these companies and most of the seasonals from them in previous years. I'm generally fond of winter seasonals because they tend to be richer than other seasons (often rich, heavily malted lagers and ales) and sometimes brewers add Christmasy spices like nutmeg.

So, who else scored some beer for Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or any other seasonal (celebration of vacation from work?) celebration?