No, that’s not a judgment call on my part. I love Lagunitas. But that is the name of their new seasonal ale for 2011; Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale. They’re calling it that because the new beer is a temporary replacement for their popular — and usual holiday seasonal — Brown Shugga’, which they won’t be able to brew this year due to the installation of their new 250-barrel brewhouse.

From the press release:

It is a sad day at Lagunitas when we have to tell you that our favorite seasonal — Brown Shugga — will take a year off and come back in full force in the fall of 2012 after the installation of our new brewhouse.

A brand new beer that’s sure to please is our “Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale”….. it’s our BrownShugga’ substitute.

This beer is a Dry-Hopped ‘Cereal Medley’ of Barley, Rye, Wheat, and Oats…. full of complexishness from the 4 grains, and weighing in at 7.6% abv, it is mondo-dry-hopped for that big aroma and resinous hop flavor.

The entire project has a self-deprecating air about it, including the label notes, which are always written by Lagunitas founder Tony Magee. To wit:

This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feared BrownShugga’ Ale. You see, we had a couple of good years (thank you very much) and so heading into this season while we are awaiting a January delivery of a new brewhouse we are jammin’ along brewing 80 barrels of IPA and PILS and such every 3 hours. A couple of months back we realized that since we can only brew a mere 60 barrels of Shugga every 5 hours, that we were seriously screwed. For every case of Shugga’ brewed, we’d short 3 cases of our daily brews. The new brewhouse will help insure that this kind of failure never happens again. It’s a mess that we can not brew our BrownShugga’ this year and we suck for not doing it. There is nothing cool about screwing up this badly and we know it. Maybe we can sue our sorry selves. There is no joy in our hearts this holiday and the best we can hope for is a quick and merciful end. F*@& us. This totally blows. Whatever. We freaking munch moldy donkey butt and we just want it all to be over ….

My guess is that the new Lagunitas Suck Holiday Ale will be so good that we’ll all forgive them and Santa will not bring them all a lump of coal this Christmas. They do seem to be appealing to Santa’s better nature but putting a yummy-looking Santa cookie on the label. Perhaps they’ll leave some of them out on Christmas Eve so when Santa comes down the brewhouse chimney, he can eat himself.