Category : Beer Advent Calendar
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 24: DeuS & Young’s Christmas Pudding Ale
December 24th, 2009
This final day’s selection comes from Pete Brown, author of Man Walks Into a Pub, Three Sheets to the Wind and Hops and Glory, and the newly-minted British Guild of Beer Writers Beer Writer of the Year. Pete was kind enough to send two beers for his Christmas picks, which seems entirely fitting. Merry Christmas!
This is really bad of me but my favourite Christmas beer is not technically a Christmas beer at all. I cook Christmas dinner every year and I always serve it with a bottle of DeuS. When I’ve tried it at tastings on its own it’s a little bit too full-on once you’ve built it up as a champagne beer. But with turkey and all the trimmings to balance it, it’s just like champagne only much, much better, and always makes Christmas feel a bit more special.
I follow this with Young’s Christmas Pudding Ale. Look, it’s not clever – serving a beer that actually tastes of Christmas pudding with Christmas pudding is not going to win any prizes for shrewd beer and food pairing. But no one wants to be clever or shrewd on Christmas day. It works. It’s lovely. Beer that tastes of cinnamon and marzipan and dried fruit. Willie Wonka would have been proud.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 23: Alaskan Barley Wine
December 23rd, 2009
Today is my birthday, and as is the tradition for the Advent Calendar, my pick is a vanity beer: not necessarily a holiday beer, but a stellar example of something I’d love to crack open for my birthday. And, as it happens, I have a 2007 bottle (the first year ever bottled) of Alaskan Barley Wine sitting in my fridge right now, which I plan to open tonight.
This Barley Wine is a powerhouse of a beer, clocking in at 10.4% alcohol by volume and winning a slew of awards over the years. It’s nicknamed “Big Nugget” with a backstory that should be award-winning, too:
Alaskan Barley Wine is produced in small batches each year. Typically this higher alcohol beverage is brewed in the spring, cellared in the tunnels of the Alaska-Juneau Gold Mine for the summer and retrieved in time for its release at the Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival in January. The cool tunnels of the mine shaft provide natural refrigeration and a prime environment for the aging process.
Barleywine is one of my absolute favorite styles of beer, but I have not actually had Alaskan’s yet. That’ll change tonight, and I might post some notes later about the (vintage) beer. Then again, I might not… it is my birthday, after all.
BeerAdvocate: A-. RateBeer: 3.88/5, 98th percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 22: Weeping Radish Christmas Bier
December 22nd, 2009
The Christmas Doppelbock from Weeping Radish Brewery was one I featured the first year I did this Advent Calendar and I thought it was time to highlight this again. Hence, Weeping Radish Christmas Bier is today’s pick.
Weeping Radish is North Carolina’s oldest microbrewery, and they’ve focused on producing Reinheitsgebot-compliant German-styles of beer. Their Christmas Doppelbock is brewed with “over 50% Munich malt” and is 8.2% alcohol by volume: strong and rich, a nice seasonal accompaniment to just about anything on your holiday menu.
As I noted way back in 2005’s Calendar, this beer also has the distinction of being North Carolina’s first high-alcohol brew produced when the state raised its alcohol limit from 6% (by volume) to 15, in that same year. Quite a nice Christmas gift (Christmas miracle?), if you ask me.
BeerAdvocate (1 review): C+. RateBeer: 3.21/5, 61st percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 21: De Struise Brouwers Tsjeeses
December 21st, 2009
Today’s beer is a second pick from Beer Goddess Lisa Morrison.
Tsjeeses is pronounced much like the man whom Christmas celebrates: Jesus himself. And, apparently, it is what the brewers would happily exclaim upon the first sip of this unique brew, “T’sjeeses, what a beer!”
The Santa-capped guy on the label is the creation of the brewmaster, after enjoying one too many Tsjeeseses, according to popular lore.
This holiday ale is lagered for eight months on different stone fruits before it meets the bottle. The fruit is evident in the first sip, and lingers throughout, along with honey, a touch of citrus and herbal spice.
Tsjeeses is worth seeking out — and you might even become a disciple.
BeerAdvocate: A-. RateBeer: 3.77/5, 96th percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 20: Monteith’s Doppelbock Winter Ale
December 20th, 2009
Today we venture around the world to New Zealand for our beer today—I don’t believe I’ve picked a New Zealand beer before—Monteith’s Brewing’s Doppelbock Winter Ale. Now I know “Doppelbock” and “Ale” are somewhat contradictory in terms of styles, but it’s Christmas, and we can all overlook such details when the beer is good.
Their description:
A profound enveloping winter beer. Monteith’s Doppelbock Winter Ale is a smoothly rich beer with a dense head, a powerful aroma, and chocolatey malt notes — the perfect way to cheer yourself up this winter.
A winter-warmer brew, Monteith’s Doppelbock Winter Ale is characterised by its smooth rich start, rounded body and long finish. Its full-malty flavour is the outcome of lovingly-crafted four premium malts.
Monteith’s Doppelbock Winter Ale blends traditional German Munich-malts with a pilsner malt and just a hint of dark malt which delectably delivers a voluptuous beer with a winter fire’s red hue.
The beer itself is 6% alcohol by volume and is, as they say, “the perfect pre-dinner beer.”
BeerAdvocate: B. RateBeer: 3.14/5, 55th percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 19: Affligem Noël
December 19th, 2009
One of the beers Stan asked about when selecting one for the Advent Calendar was Affligem Noël, and I realized it was a Christmas ale I had not yet featured over the years. This is a classic Belgian Abbey Christmas beer, a Strong Dark Ale that is 9% alcohol by volume, and is rich and complex, corked and bottle conditioned.
Lew had a nice description of this beer recently:
So here I am, finishing up a beer that has just gotten better and better as it warms up. 9%, and my lips agree: this is a big boy beer. The nose is full of a pleasantly sweet-tart mix of pit fruit — plum, sour cherry — and a dark chocolate background. The beer itself matches that, with an intensely fizzy carbonation that is not unpleasant at all. What surprises me is the degree of attenuation; if you don’t like Chimay Red/Blue for their sweet thickness, this is your beer. The Noël has a very light and drinkable body for that 9% ABV, and the fruit really cleans up the end.
This would be a lovely addition to your Christmas stocking—or a great gift to any beer geeks you know.
BeerAdvocate: A-. RateBeer: 3.63/5, 93rd percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 18: Gritty McDuff’s Christmas Ale
December 18th, 2009
Today’s pick comes from one of Maine’s most popular brewers: Gritty McDuff’s Christmas Ale, a big ESB that shows up in November and lasts through the end of the year. Their recipe focuses on a solid interpretation of the style rather than gimmick:
Our Christmas Ale is a robust E.S.B. (Extra Special Bitter) full of holiday cheer. Christmas Ale has a lovely, dark red/amber color and a rich, full-bodied, malty taste with a slightly roasted undertone. We brew our Christmas Ale to an original gravity of 1064 (about 6.2% alcohol by volume) using only the finest English Pale and Crystal Malts, with a touch of Roasted Barley as well. A blend of Clusters, Styrian Goldings, Saaz and Yakima Goldings leaf hops round out this hearty brew. Gritty’s Christmas Ale has no additives, fruits or spices.
As an added bonus, I dug up a commercial for Gritty’s Christmas Ale on YouTube while I was searching around. It’s from a couple years ago and showcases the kind of goofy, Strange Brew/Newhart-esque sensibility you’d expect from a brewer that named itself “Gritty McDuff.” Go watch it; your day will be better for it.
BeerAdvocate: B+. RateBeer: 3.37/5, 77th percentile.
Yet another Advent Beer Calendar
December 17th, 2009I found this via Twitter the other day, and I think it’s awesome:
Someone has made an actual (physical) advent calendar with beer as each day’s item… and they’re opening beers to match!
You can view the photostream on this Twitpic account, and play along at home.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 17: N’Ice Chouffe
December 17th, 2009
Today’s selection comes from beer blogger Alan McLeod, author/editor of A Good Beer Blog, one of the “old timers” and finest bloggers out there. He’s currently knee-deep in his annual Yule Photo Contest but kindly took the time to write up a post for the Calendar (which you can also find on his site today).
Jon Abernathy of The Brew Site asked me to join in and place one beer on his Advent calendar this Christmas season. Well, as Jon is I think the only pure beer blogger who may well have been posting longer than I have who am I to say no? I posted my first beer blog post on this stand alone beer blog around Monday 25 October 2004 while his site went back to June. Here is a post from Jon the next day as he finds A Good Beer Blog as he looks throughout an empty internet for other beer blogs. My post was also about hunting out beer sites.
So Yuletide beer, eh? I wrote about a favorite almost two years ago now and I expect it would be a beer that could warm the heart of even the meanest anti-baby activist:
Light chestnut-caramel ale under the fine tan rim and foam. Pumpernickel and line scented. In the mouth, this is a really interesting ale with the thyme giving a real roast of lamb effect. A beer that begs to soak a wee sheep’s leg as much as a hefeweizen begs to meet pork. Nutty malt with brown sugar richness and a very distinct but balanced thyme presence…pungent even. The coriander is more of a counterpoint, however much it is there in the nose. This beer could match a strong hard cheese well, too, like aged gouda but maybe not anything blue unless it came out of a sheep. Or roast parsnips. It would go with roast parsnips.
You have no idea how angry it makes me that I don’t have a lifetime’s store of this beer laid up in the basement – or at lease a deal with Brasserie D’Achouffe that sees two cases show up every December 18th. Life’s tragedy summarized right there. Anyway, happy Christmas and a merry New Year to you all.
[BeerAdvocate: A-. RateBeer: 3.81/5, 98th percentile]
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 16: Theresianer Birra d’Inverno
December 16th, 2009
Today’s pick comes from beer writer Stephen Beaumont, author of a number of books as well as several blogs. He has also written for “a ridiculous variety of publications“. Stephen has selected Birra D’Inverno from Theresianer in Italy.
I became aware of this brewery when a local importer began bringing their lovely Vienna lager into my home province, largely to sell to the sizable Italian restaurant market he had built up with his wine imports. Their ales, however, I was less enamoured by, so it was with some trepidation that I uncorked this beautifully packaged strong winter ale.
(One thing you can say for certain about Italian breweries is that they have their aethetics down pat. I don’t know if I’ve come across a single craft beer from Italy that is not at least attractively, and more often gorgeously, packaged.)
I needn’t have worried. Purple-ish brown in colour, this beer, which so far as I can figure is unspiced, has a terrifically appealing nose, with faint allspice accenting a malty, dark and milk chocolate base aroma, along with some plum and candied apricot notes and a whiff of something particularly perfumey, almost lavender-like, in fact. On the palate, it’s a little less complicated, but not so much so that it fails to intrigue with more chocolate, mild brown spice, a bit of roasted hazelnut and a suggestion of gingerbread. The finish is as warming and off-off-dry as it deserves to be. All in all, this is an impressive effort of which this Trieste brewery should be proud.
[On the ratings sites, the closest match for Birra D'Inverno is Theresianer's Strong Ale.]
BeerAdvocate: B. RateBeer: 3.36/5, 74th percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 15: Bell’s Christmas Ale
December 15th, 2009
Today’s beer comes from one of Michigan’s long-time craft brewers, Bell’s Brewery: Bell’s Christmas Ale.
Bell’s Christmas is a clean and smooth Scottish Ale, 5.4% alcohol by volume, and is “brewed with 100% Michigan barley and a blend of Pacific Northwest and Michigan hops”—keeping their seasonal gift to their customers as local as possible. I like it.
Look for warm malty and nutty notes with a hint of holiday fruits on the nose; Bell’s has eschewed the often common practice of heavily spicing up their beer for Christmas and focused on a tasty, easy-drinking favorite.
BeerAdvocate: B. RateBeer: 3.17/5, 61st percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 14: Samichlaus
December 14th, 2009
What list of Christmas beers would be complete without including Samichlaus, one of the modern granddaddy’s of them all and at one time a serious contender for the strongest beer in the world (very much surpassed these days)? It’s still billed as the strongest lager in the world and at 14% by volume, I’m willing to concede the point: this is achieved through straight fermentation and not increased through other means (such as Eisbocks, where the water in the beer is frozen and the ice removed, leaving a higher concentration of alcohol behind).
Samichlaus is very much a vintaged beer, first released in 1980:
“Samichlaus” beer is brewed once a year, in each case on December 6th, and stored and matured afterwards for over 10 months before it is bottled. “Samichlaus” beer can mature for many years in the bottle; older vintages obtain a complexity and receive their creamy warm aftertaste. This beer can be served with heavy meals and desserts, particularly with chocolate – or as digestive and meditations drink. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is the strongest lager beer in the world with 14 % alcohol and 32° original extract content.
“Samichlaus” means “Santa Claus”, of course (in the Swiss-German dialect from whence it hails), as its brew day of December 6th is Saint Nicholas Day. I rather like the late Michael Jackson’s summary of this powerful beer:
Few occasions call for such a strong brew, but perhaps the stresses and strains of the festive season justify an encounter with Santa Claus in his most powerful incarnation.
BeerAdvocate: B+. RateBeer: 3.51/5, 88th percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 13: Double Mountain Fa La La La La
December 13th, 2009
Today’s pick comes from Jeff Alworth, Portland, Oregon-based beer blogger and writer, and purveyor of the nationally-famous Honest Pint Project. If there’s any one person in Oregon who knows the regional beer scene, it’s Jeff, and he picks what may well become a new seasonal favorite.
By Christmas standards, it’s not a long tradition, but naming your beer after a seasonal song has become, well, habitual, anyway. Double Mountain selected the refrain from Deck the Halls: Fa La La La La. A nice, ecumenical choice, but one has to ask what some of these lyrics really mean. “Troll the ancient yuletide carol”? Can you troll a carol? But I digress.
For those visiting Oregon from lands where they believe we only make extremely hoppy, intense beers, Fa La La La La (“Fa” hereafter) would tend to seem like good evidence. It is a beer characterized first, middle, and last by the copious additions of Centennial hops. But here’s the thing, sometimes crazy hopping makes for lovely beer. A couple weeks ago, I went through Hood River and picked up a growler of Fa. Back in Portland, I poured a bit out into winter goblets for folks. Uniformly, they took one whiff and started smiling. A tipple and they kept smiling. There’s something so fresh about the beer that it’s irresistible—like a freshly cut Doug Fir sitting in front of the roaring fire. Great stuff.
Brief stats: Brewed with organic Pilsner and Munich malt, imported crystal malts, and Centennial hops. 7.6% ABV, 83 BU
Over at Beervana, I rate my beers with a letter grade. One could make the argument that this is a straight A beer, but I tend to grade low to give breweries a chance to tinker and tweak up their score. Call this a very Oregonian A-.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 12: Solstice D’hiver
December 12th, 2009
Image copyright 2009 Brewed for Thought
Today’s pick comes from beer blogger and writer Mario Rubio, who authors Brewed for Thought (his main blog) and also writes for Examiner.com and Hop Press (which he also organized).
Mario picks Solstice D’hiver from Brasserie Dieu du Ciel in Quebec, Canada. He has the full writeup on his blog:
Translated as the Winter Solstice, Solstice d’hiver is perfect for the season. Once I opened the bottle, I was hit with aromas similar to scotch. Sharp roast and stinging hops strike at the surface of this beer. Alcohol and fruit play together throughout the flavor with an equally sharp finish. Hops dance lightly on the tongue as alcohol leaves a lingering burn.
Mario’s been doing good things lately, so after you read his full post, check out the rest of his site, as well—think of it as an early Christmas present to yourself.
BeerAdvocate: B+. RateBeer: 3.75/5, 96th percentile.
Advent Beer Calendar 2009: Day 11: Santa’s Private Reserve
December 11th, 2009
Today’s beer pick is an Oregon beer—you know I had to include at least one—from one of Oregon’s “Old Guard” breweries: Rogue’s Santa’s Private Reserve.
This is a Northwest Red ale, 6% alcohol, that Rogue describes thusly:
Rogue’s annual holiday offering, Santa’s Private Reserve, is a variation of the classic Saint Rogue Red, but with double the hops–including Chinook, and Centennial, and a mystery hop called Rudolph by head brewer John “more hops” Maier!
Tasting notes on their site (and on the bottle) note a “hoppy spruce finish”—something I also noted in a past review of SPR. It’s in the aroma especially: “a hoppy aroma that reminds me of fir trees” and the flavor is intensely hoppy with lots of resin and spice and you will swear there is a touch of spruce in the bottle.
Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the “Rudolph” mystery hop was in fact spruce tips. Somehow that seems appropriate, adding just the right Christmas (and Santa!) touch with an Oregon twist: tips from Sitka spruce trees are the most commonly used, and Sitkas are native to the Pacific Northwest coast.
But, it’s a mystery, one left to ponder as you sip and enjoy the holidays.
BeerAdvocate: B+. RateBeer: 3.51/5, 88th percentile.
