For the 106th edition of the beer blogging jamboree that is ‘The Session’ Jay Brooks has asked us to consider ‘holiday beers’:
Holiday beers are by design no one style, but are a chance for individual breweries to let their talent and imagination run wild. At the holidays, when people stop their busy lives and share some precious time with family and friends, the beer they choose should be equally as special as the time they’re sharing. So a holiday beer should be made to impress, to wow its audience, to stand out. That’s the only criteria that should be met by one of these beers. Will it impress?
We thought this would be an easy topic until we started bashing around ideas for a post over dinner. It turns out that we’ve probably already said everything we’ve got to say about Christmas beer:
- We’ve looked at the history (2014)
- We’ve sung the praises of Harvey’s Christmas Beer — ‘Christmas in a bottle’ (2012)
- We’ve argued that the ideal Christmas beer is the one you enjoy with your family (2011)
- We’ve suggested that Christmas Beers aren’t necessarily the best beers for Christmas (2009)
- And, in our early days, we even had a go at food and beer matching (2007)
But, looking back over these old posts, and rummaging through the stash looking for something vaguely Christmassy about which we hadn’t already written, our grumbles did coalesce into an observation:
In an age when strong beers — really strong beers — are available all year round, and when Halloween beers have dibs on wintry spices, does Christmas beer even exist any more? Wizzard got their wish: for beer drinkers, it can be Christmas every day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoxQ4Ul_DME
But we’re out and about today and will make sincere efforts to drink something Christmassy, even if it’s just a ‘winter warmer’ with a blinking LED on the pump clip.
1st December it is now definitely count down to Christmas. #RoseyNosey is available both in bottle and on draught pic.twitter.com/QGQpxUw6Q1
— Batemans Brewery (@batemansbrewery) December 1, 2015
2 replies on “Session 106: Holiday Beers”
Not sure if this is much of an answer but every place Ive worked Christmas beers have been a bit of a problem because as soon as you hit January nobody wants to drink them. Theres a few odd traditional brews though. UK – Spiced, Canada – Vanilla and Norway was traditionally all Bok. Ours this year is a bit random but most Norwegians breweries aim to release their beers in October.
Perhaps I’m simply an equal opportunity taster, but for me, seasonal brews taste just as yummy (or crummy) in June as they do October. (Provided of course, that they haven’t passed their expiry date!)