The April snowstorm that blanketed the Salt Lake Valley last week is the biggest I’ve seen since moving here in September. Admittedly it hasn’t been a great winter. Luckily I was able to take advantage of my employer’s powder morning policy, getting up to Brighton Resort for first chair and making a few last-week-of-the-season powder turns. The hardest part is leaving to head to work while the late-comers are still arriving to make their own tracks in my snow.

Powder mornings like that always remind me of my ski bum days at Copper Mountain, Colorado, when calling in sick after big dumps for a drive to Steamboat was standard procedure. There was always the challenge off having to sneak into work, though, where your ski gear was stored. This led to many covert missions into the lift operations locker room that involved coercion, deception, and running like hell.

Those days the cheapest three-two grocery store beer we could find was also the norm, and someone else had to purchase it as my friends never followed through on their promise to make me a fake ID. But these days I have a real ID and I prefer something a little more robust, like Uinta Brewing Company‘s Yard Sale Winter Lager.

All winter long Yard Sale’s label, a skier in mid-fall yard-saling his gear all across a snowy mountain landscape has appealed to me —drawn in the same gorgeous style as the rest of Uinta’s labels. But up until today, I, for some reason, hadn’t tried it.

Just as I’m glad that winter decided to make another appearance, I’m glad I was able to pick up a few bottles of this toasty and malty lager in a Uinta mix and match 12-pack. It’s robust, as any winter beer should be, but it also has the best aspects of a lager, a smooth taste, crisp finish, and light body that wouldn’t make you hesitate about having a few more around the lodge fireplace.

Yeah, I’m excited for summertime here in Utah, for casting bugs to trout in mountain streams and for cruising on a fat-tire bike down the now snow-covered singletrack, but as long as I have a few more of these puppies in the fridge, winter need not make a hurried exit.