What better to get you in the mood for a day of drinking on St. Patrick’s Day than a photo of a beautiful Irish model with green eyes and strawberry blonde hair – our very own Amanda Neal. She got into the spirit in her photo shoot with plenty of green St. Patrick’s Day gear, and we expect you’ll run into plenty of Irish hotties like Amanda who will get friendlier by the hour as they drink up more beer on this excellent holiday.

Speaking of beer, many of you will be drinking up plenty of Guinness, but our beer expert Mike Barkacs has another Irish beer suggestion for your drinking pleasure – Murphy’s Stout.

St. Patrick’s Day seems to be a problem for many people. Well, it’s become a problem for me anyway. On that day, I can’t seem to stand at a bar more than five minutes without some stumbling amateur falling into me, sloshing my drink and soaking me with theirs. Otherwise fairly normal people, albeit dressed in garish and silly clothing, take to whooping and hollering for no apparent reason, morning, noon and night. Almost all bar conversations devolve into slurred professions of either undying love or spluttering demands to step outside. It’s Saturday night with all the good bits removed. What is the perfect beverage for this happy and festive occasion? Murphy’s Stout works on just about every level.

On this, of all days, something mistakenly Irish is actually most appropriate. Sure, there’s always the ubiquitous black stuff that everyone else will be having, but that may be a tad too genuine. Guinness is fine, but save that for all the other days of the year. Murphy’s looks the part of a popular Irish beer, even though it’s not made in Cork anymore. It’s black with a tan head — what else do you want? It might be a tad creamier than its more famous cousin, but you’d be hard pressed to spot a difference between the two by sight alone. So, like the rest of the revelers, it will easily pass for Irish just this once. Even if it is now made in, well, England. Birthplace of St. Patrick himself.

Of course, you don’t have to drink Irish beer on this Irish holiday, so feel free to check out Mike’s other beer reviews for other options.

I tried to love this beer. I just can’t. I try it every year, hoping the otherwise fabulous Brouwerij Huyghe can get it right. I love Delirium Tremens, and anybody that can come up with that obviously knows everything about brewing beer. How can they possibly get their Christmas beer wrong? It’s meant to be a gift to all their loyal beer loving customers. Not that it’s awfu — I doubt they could make an awful beer even if they tried — but this Christmas Ale falls so far below expectations that you may just want to re-gift it to the crazy uncle.

It looks, and smells, like it might even surpass expectations. And the 10% alcohol could make for a very merry Christmas season. It’s a deep reddish amber, but not as dark as many big Belgian dark ales. The head fades quickly to lacing, but that’s not unusual in most Christmas beers. While not being clear, it would be hard to call it cloudy. Maybe a thin, sedimentless fog. The aroma is both complex and entirely unusual for a Christmas ale. You expect to find a load of spices, tons of alcohol and plenty of malt. Those are there, but they are way back behind an almost saison-style earthiness. Then a load of strange fruits for a Christmas beer, the most prominent being banana, of all things. None of this is the least unpleasant. Unusual for the style, maybe, but very promising.

But that’s the point where the Noel loses me.

You can go read the rest of the review here.

Here’s one site’s recommendations on the 10 best holiday beers.