Enough prattling on, what about the beer I hear you asking.

I was pretty restrained during the meal and its aftermath, mostly due to me sipping the Drambuie throughout the morning and early afternoon as I was puttering around in the kitchen.

But my son-in-law brought along a couple of sours from Crooked Stave (it has been a long time) and Wayward Lane (rumor has it that they may have begun tinkering with casks) to enjoy, and I managed to find a dusty old bottle of Czar Face (a 10% barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout) from M.I.A. Brewing down in Doral, Florida.

It is that last one that got me thinking about the ghost beers of the past.

It has been sitting at the back of one of my kitchen cabinets since July this year, when I brought it back with me from a family visit to South Florida.

Prior to that, it had been sitting in the back of my sister-in-law’s liquor cabinet for over six years; I had picked it up at Total Wine in either Boca Raton six years ago or Coral Springs seven years ago.

It had originally been purchased for a holiday party in Deerfield Beach, but had been put away and just forgotten until my sister-in-law had decided to do a cleanup of her liquor cabinet this year… a true ghost.

Deep opaque black (the blackest of blacks) with an instantly dissolving tan head, a healthy bourbon/charcoal nose and tingly boozy burnt coffee taste, but in a good way. Any hint of a licorice sweetness that it may have had initially, is long gone.

No indication of any bottle conditioning but at 10% it really doesn’t need it, and at seven years in the bottle it would be of little use anyway; if I had wanted it any livelier, I would have searched for it all those years ago.

My son-in-law and I sipped our way through a couple of small pours during and after dinner, and the remaining half-bottle was re-sealed with plastic wrap and foil and moved to the fridge, to be “consumed later”.

It sat there on Christmas Day as we all did, forgotten again.

But today, Boxing Day, as I sat down at my computer for the first time in nearly a week, so that I could work on this post, I was going to pour myself one of those cordials to keep my lips wet while I was typing away.

Then, I remembered it, poured myself another 4oz pour, and gave it twenty minutes to warm up.

This time it was totally flat right from the get-go, but I am really getting to appreciate the gently-warming booziness of this delicious beer.

Certainly not a beer for rushing, but for slowly savoring.

I reckon that I have two more small pours from the bottle, one each for the next two days before I return to work on Friday.

It can wait …

… it has waited for seven long years.