Tonight on the Holiday Beer Parade we have Great Divide Hibernation Ale, a "classic English-style old ale" coming in at a hearty 8.7% ABV. Great Divide has been making this beer since 1995, it won a Gold Medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 1997 and several other medals since, and has a BeerAdvocate score of 90.

I haven't had this beer before but given its bona fides my expectations are pretty high. I also appreciate the statement "We forgo the holiday spices" in the description since more often than not, for me anyway, that goes pretty wrong.

Let's give it a spin!

Color

The color on this beer is a rich chocolate brown with a nice medium tan head. It's a nice dark brown almost leathery color that lets you know what you're getting into.

Aroma

Booze. Booze all day long. Earthiness, woodiness, maybe just a hint of bourbon if I had to put my finger on some specific type of alcohol in the aroma, but it's a highly pronounced alcohol warmth that gives way to chocolate, breadiness, and some coffee in the mix as well. This is not one of those beers that hides its high ABV. The alcohol aroma is a bit more than I'd like to be what one might call "inviting," but it's not altogether unpleasant.

Flavor

Interestingly, the heavy booziness in the aroma isn't nearly as pronounced in the flavor. This is very much a strong beer, with a big, malty mouthfeel, but it doesn't scream "ALCOHOL!" at you while you're drinking it. The most prominent flavor is dark chocolate/cocoa (I say cocoa specifically because the mouthfeel has a bit of that "grittiness" from something like a hot cocoa), followed by heavy malt and bread notes, and dark fruit and a little hop bitterness in the finish.

Since this is a sipper I took my time with this one, and as it warmed it evolved in interesting ways. The strong alcohol notes in the aroma mellowed, the flavors melded better, and more of the dark fruit and even some tobacco notes started coming through.

Overall

I enjoyed this one, as I do everything I've ever had from Great Divide. It isn't my favorite and I didn't find myself longing for another one right away, but it's a solid, well-made, very well-balanced and tasty winter warmer. I do appreciate that this is a distinctive beer and since I picked up a six pack of it I'm interested to see what I think when I take another run at it.

Cheers!