XXXMas Ale

By the time he had exited the bar area and made his way into the brewery still redolent with the odors of their last brew, it had been nearly twenty minutes. Blake hoped she hadn’t given up on him. He put his hands in his pockets and tried to appear nonchalant as if there were something to check out in the currently dormant production facility. When Dani stepped out from the door of the adjacent fermentation cellar, he stopped.

"Hey." She held a large brown bottle, unlabeled, and two brandy snifter-style glasses.

"Hey, yourself," he said, leaning on one of the tall stainless steel vessels where beer was creating itself, the fermentation bucket bubbling away on the floor next to his feet. "I’ll have to admit, I’m not terribly sophisticated about sour beers…" His voice drifted off. She remained silent, head tilted to the side, seemingly taking him in from head to toe. He let her have her little appraisal, crossed his arms over his chest, trying to keep the pounding of his heart under control.

"Here," she said, thrusting the bottle and glasses into his hands. She started to walk away, and Blake followed her, assuming that was the right move. The sway of her hips set her black skirt swirling around her calves, and her fit upper back and shoulders gave him quite the view as he gripped the stuff she’d given him. Stopping at a tall stack of pallets, she looked around a minute, then her eyes lit on the bags of malt nearby. She turned and took the bottle and glasses from him. "Heave a couple of those up there." She indicated to the nearly six-foot pile of wooden pallets one of his employees had created earlier in the day. He shrugged, pulled a couple of them over the stand then grabbed a third to toss up onto the stack. "Nice," she said. "One more.”

"Are we gonna have a picnic up there?" he asked, adding the bag before stepping back down to the floor.

"Something like that." She stood up on his malt-bag step stool and stretched up to place the bottle and glasses on the top. "C’mon," she said, before grasping the platform and climbing up. Her strong legs were revealed with every step.

Blake shook his head at his nearly erect self. Damn. This woman was something else so far. He was even willing to suffer through what, in his experience, would be beer sour enough to pucker your lips for days, if what he remembered from lambics rang true. The two he’d had were the closest thing he’d come to drinking straight vinegar.