We’re not totally sure what the motto at BeerSocks.net means — “Don’t just walk the walk, hop the hops” — but the socks are definitely for showing off. Perhaps the story behind the the little company is true:

“We are a close group of friends that are always on the hunt for fun activities to showcase our amazing and expansive ideas in costuming. In October of 2011, we donned our snazziest lederhosen with our bright orange Beer Socks and headed out to Washington state’s best ‘fest: the Leavenworth Oktoberfest,” they explain at their website. When others at the festival kept asking about their socks, and even to have their pictures taken with them, they decided the were on to something.

Boston Beer Company has teamed up with San Francisco-based chocolate maker TCHO to create a Samuel Adams Beer Lover’s Chocolate Box, which includes two each of six chocolates designed to pair with the six different beers in the Samuel Adams Winters Classics Variety Pack. “The idea of pairing beer and food has been around for centuries, but many people are just starting to explore the idea and have fun with it while learning what works. From a juicy burger to a rich cheese or dessert, there’s a beer to create that perfect pairing – it’s all about letting the flavor of one enhance the other,” Jennifer Glanville, brewery manager at the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery, said for a press release.

This package comes with notes about each chocolate and suggestions for pairing with the beers in the variety pack. Those include Boston Lager, Winter Lager, Holiday Porter, Old Fezziwig, Chocolate Bock, a White Christmas. The last beer, an unfiltered white ale brewed with cinnamon and nutmeg spices and orange peel, is a new addition. The chocolate box can be ordered online or purchased in Samuel Adams Boston Brewery gift shop.

In case you were wondering, the Hopdrops from Beercandy really do smell and taste like Cascade hops.

That seems important to us at Real Beer. We’ve already got plenty of candy, most particularly chocolate, to pair with beer. These stand alone. Not surprisingly, no Beercandy products contain a measurable amount of alcohol. Yet they still taste of beer, though some more than others.

Beercandy offers three basic choices: an assortment of caramels; BeerTaffy in stout and IPA flavors; and the HopDrops, hard candies flavored with Cascade hop oil and bittered with iso-alpha acids.

Don Russell, author of Christmas Beer: The Cheeriest, Tastiest, and Most Unusual Holiday Brews and sometimes known as Joe Sixpack, writes today about his annual Xmas beer run.

He didn’t fly to Norway this year, but per usual he also didn’t settle for shopping in one store. He begins, “This year, I kept closer to home, but the beer run was no less fulfilling. It took me to Whole Foods’ Cold Point Pub at Plymouth Meeting’s madhouse mall, where the bottle shop is just brimming with holiday bottles. Those silly Pennsylvania liquor laws that limit takeout purchases to 192 ounces had me hauling the first load of bottles (Corsendonk Christmas Ale, Dupont Avec Les Bon Voeux) to the parking garage before hiking back for a fine-looking magnum of Mikkeller Red/White Christmas.”

Then he moves on, acquiring, among other things, Evil Twin Christmas Eve at a New York City Hotel Room (Denmark). “Sounds more like an O Henry short story than an imperial stout.”