Serving suggestion: warmed and topped with a slice of blood orange.

For more insights on the thoughtful use of herbs and spices, see our recent Flavor Fever column on exploring that playground.

ALL-GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.065 (15.9°P)
FG: 1.023 (5.8°P)
IBUs: 45
ABV: 6.5%

MALT/GRAIN BILL
8.7 lb (3.9 kg) pale ale
1.7 lb (771 g) malted rye
12 oz (340) caramel/crystal 20°L
9 oz (255 g) biscuit
9 oz (255 g) melanoidin
6 oz (170 g) caramel/crystal 80°L
2.5 oz (71 g) Weyermann Carafa III

HOPS & ADDITIONS SCHEDULE
0.75 oz (21 g) Northern Brewer at 60 minutes [20 IBUs]
1.6 oz (45 g) Mandarina Bavaria at 10 minutes [15 IBUs]
1.6 oz (45 g) Mandarina Bavaria at flameout/whirlpool [10 IBUs]
0.7 oz (20 g) orange zest at flameout/whirlpool
1.5 oz (43 g) Indian coriander at flameout/whirlpool
0.2 oz (6 g) allspice at flameout/whirlpool
0.4 oz (11 g) Ceylon cinnamon at flameout/whirlpool
0.1 oz (3 g) cardamom at flameout/whirlpool
0.1 oz (3 g) mahlab at flameout/whirlpool

YEAST
Your favorite English ale strain

DIRECTIONS
Mill the grains and mash at 152°F (67°C) for 60 minutes. Recirculate until the runnings are clear, then run off into the kettle. Sparge and top up as needed to get about 6 gallons (23 liters) of wort, depending on your evaporation rate. Boil for 60 minutes, adding the hops according to the schedule. After the boil, do a whirlpool step: Stir or recirculate to create a vortex, add the whirlpool hops and spices, then allow 15 minutes to steep and settle. Chill to about 68°F (20°C), aerate the wort, and pitch the yeast. Ferment at about 70°F (21°C) until the surface clears and the beer drops bright. Package and carbonate to about 2 volumes of CO₂ (a little lighter than normal) or condition and serve it as a cask ale.

BREWER’S NOTES
Water: With dark malts present, this beer is tolerant of varying profiles; you just need at least 60 ppm calcium and a maximum 150 ppm bicarbonate.
Botanicals: Go with fresh and freshly ground/processed. For the zest, you can use a potato peeler. Bitter orange is ideal but hard to find fresh unless you have a Caribbean market nearby; the dried peel isn’t great. For a substitute, either use a 70/30 mix of sweet orange and grapefruit peel or a tablespoon of orange marmalade added as the wort cools. Ceylon cinnamon is more complex and woody but less intense than cassia cinnamon, which most Americans think of as cinnamon. Popular in the Middle East, mahlab is the pits of St. Lucie cherries (see “Special Ingredient: Mahlab).
Bench testing, post-fermentation: If you prefer, double the quantities of zest and spices, then mix them in a 1:5 ratio with cheap vodka. Soak for a day or so, then strain an add the vodka to the beer at bottling/kegging—you can test in 100 ml of the beer to determine the most appropriate level.
Variations: There are innumerable possibilities here—stronger, lighter, or darker, as well as other spice combinations. The idea is to make the mingled spices serve as background to the orange, with none of them really standing out on their own. You could also add one more layer of flavor via deeply toasted American oak chips—say, 0.25 oz (7 g), added at fermentation. With this English ale style, dry hops are also perfectly reasonable. Consider some English Harlequin (fruity/thiol) or Jester (spicy/apricot) at about 2 oz (57 g), post-fermentation. Otherwise, pick a favorite that would complement the citrus and spice.

Active preparation time: 35 minutes
Total time: 75 minutes
Serves: 6–8

Profiteroles

1 cup (8 fl oz/237 ml) spiced winter or pumpkin ale
4 Tbs (½ stick) unsalted butter
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 large eggs
2 Tbs brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 400°F (204°C). Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, bring the beer, butter, and salt just to a boil. Turn off the heat, add all the flour, and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until a dough forms. Turn the heat back on to medium and continue mixing until the dough dries out, pulls away from the sides of the pan, and forms a smooth ball, 1–2 minutes. Transfer the dough to the bowl of a food processor and let it cool for 5–6 minutes so it won’t cook the eggs when you add them. Process for 5 seconds.

Add the eggs and brown sugar to the processor bowl and process until the eggs are well mixed in, 10–15 seconds. The dough should appear smooth and shiny. Transfer the dough to a bowl and let it cool for 10 minutes.

Scoop tablespoon-size mounds onto the parchment-covered cookie sheet, spacing about 2 inches (5 cm) apart. Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350°F (177°C) and continue baking until golden brown and crisp, about 15 minutes. Cool completely.

Mousse

1 cup (8 fl oz/237 ml) heavy cream
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup mascarpone
2 Tbs (1 fl oz/30 ml) pure maple syrup
1 Tbs (½ fl oz/15 ml) vanilla
1 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp ginger powder
Powdered sugar (optional)

Combine the cream and sugar in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a wire-whip attachment. Begin whisking on low speed. Gradually increase the speed to high. Beat for 2–3 minutes, until the cream is firm and fluffy. Add the mascarpone, maple syrup, vanilla, and spices. Beat another 30 seconds. Refrigerate 1 hour.

Cut a slice from the top of each profiterole, fill the profiterole with mousse, and replace the top. Dust with powdered sugar if desired.

Beer Suggestions: No Label Nightmare on 1st Street (Katy, Texas), pFriem Belgian Christmas Ale (Hood River, Oregon), St. Bernardus Christmas Ale (Watou, West Flanders, Belgium), or Schlafly Pumpkin Ale (St. Louis).

Let’s be clear: This is (probably) not a historically accurate recipe, since evidence from the time is scanty. Let’s call it speculation based on what we know of the time and of Scandinavian farmhouse brewing traditions.

King Harald Fairhair’s beer probably was similar to a kornøl, and you can read more about that here (and in my book, Historical Brewing Techniques). So, instead, let’s consider what his subjects might have brewed in the 9th and 10th centuries, during the Viking Age.

The most common malt would have been homemade, from barley dried in a sauna and thus lightly brown and lightly smoked—usually with alder, birch, or juniper wood. Brewing kettles don’t appear to have been commonly available before roughly 1600, so commoners, very likely, would have brewed stone beer. (Huge piles of heat-shattered stone can be found under the soil of pretty much every Norwegian farm, dating anywhere from the sixth century to the early 17th.)

There’s no direct evidence for how the stones were used, but it appears likely that in western Norway, brewers used the stones to heat the brewing liquor then poured it into their mash. In the east, however, they apparently mixed their malt and cold water in wooden vessels, then heated that cold mash with hot stones.

When it comes to herbs, our evidence is limited. There are Middle Age finds of Myrica gale in a brewing context, and from Denmark there are finds going back to the Bronze Age. There’s also evidence for Myrica gale from place names and ethnography, and 900 CE seems early for Norwegian commoners to be using hops. Other possibilities include St. John’s wort, yarrow, and—perhaps the most likely—caraway. Juniper seems almost a given.

With all that in mind, let’s place ourselves in lower Telemark in eastern Norway, during the Viking Age, and imagine something like the following ingredients and process.

ALL-GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.087 (20.9°P)
FG: 1.015 (3.8°P)
IBUs: N/A
ABV: 9.6% ABV

MALT/GRAIN BILL
13.1 lb (5.9 kg) pale ale
2.5 lb (1.1 kg) Munich
14 oz (397 g) alder-smoked malt

ADDITIONS SCHEDULE
2.3 oz (65 g) Myrica gale (bog myrtle)
3–4 fresh juniper branches

YEAST
Your favorite kveik

DIRECTIONS
Mill the grains and mix with about 8 gallons (30 liters) of unheated water in a wooden tub, or in a kettle sturdy enough to withstand fiery-hot stones. Heat the hot stones in a fire, then carefully, using large tongs, add them to the tub one by one. (Be sure to choose hard, dense stones and wear eye protection; for more tips, see For Those About to Rock.) After adding each stone, stir to avoid burning the mash, and wait a little while before adding another one. Ideally, you want to go slowly through a typical multistep mash, spending an hour within 140–158°F (60–70°C). Finally, add enough stones to bring the mash to a boil.

Prepare a lauter tun by placing a few juniper branches in the bottom, with the Myrica gale on top of those. Transfer the mash to the lauter tun and let it rest a while, then run off into a heat-resistant fermentor or intermediary vessel, topping off with water as necessary. Cool the wort to about 99°F (37°C), then pitch the kveik. Ferment for about 24 hours, then—if possible—rack to a barrel. After a day or two, bung (or close) the barrel. Open and serve on the winter solstice or Christmas Eve.

BREWER’S NOTES
The malt bill is an attempt to simulate the taste of sauna-dried malts. This is a big beer, but for Yule you need proper stuff—and in later times a beer was considered proper stuff if the volume of malt was roughly the same as the volume of wort extracted. We estimate 3.3 lb of grain per gallon (395 g per liter). Feel free to add other herbs or spices, such as caraway, if you think them appropriate.

One Christmas Eve in the late 19th century, the family on the Hovland farm in Hardanger, Norway, was sitting down for a festive dinner. The food was on the table, the candles were lit, and the big wooden mug was full of beer.

Then, suddenly, enormous hands appeared between the logs from which their house was built, tilting one side of the house into the air. In the gap between the logs, they could see giant eyes staring at them, glittering in the candlelight.

The farmer didn’t panic. He immediately knew what the problem was. He grabbed the mug of beer from the table and ran out the door to the burial mound, just beyond the farmyard, and he poured the beer on the roots of the tree growing on top. Before, the family had poured beer on this tree every Christmas Eve before the big dinner—but this year they had skipped it. Clearly, the dweller in the mound had not appreciated being overlooked on the big day.

Holiday Beer, Not an Option

What’s going on with that tale? Well, first of all, the festive time we now call Christmas wasn’t originally a Christian celebration. In Scandinavia, we call it “jul,” which is the same as the English “Yule.” The name is so old that nobody knows what it meant before.

Second, in older times, brewing for Yule was not even remotely optional.

Paragraph 7 of the Gulathing Law from the Viking Age requires farmers to brew beer for Yule. That might sound like a joke, but the law continues by saying that the penalty is three marks of silver, a considerable sum. If the farmers fail to brew for three years running, they lose everything they own and must leave the country. This is a serious law.

But why? Why would a law force people to brew?

The old Norse sagas explain what’s going on. The Norwegian king Håkon the Good grew up in 10th-century England, which was Christian at the time. When he came to Norway, the saga says, “the entire country was pagan.” Håkon then shifted the Yule celebration to coincide with Christmas, and he added the law that everyone must brew for Christmas.

What the law really says is that beer must be brewed “and blessed Christmas night in thanks to Christ and the Virgin Mary.” It’s not about forcing people to brew for Christmas. Instead, it’s about making sure they dedicate the beer to the new gods instead of the old ones.

In other words, when Håkon wanted to Christianize Norway, the first thing he did was change the Yule celebration and the beer culture. This was no coincidence because the two were closely intertwined with each other and with the pagan religion. Even before that law, every farmer was brewing for Yule.

Ale Fit for the Dead

Let’s return, then, to the 19th-century Yule, and that family whose dinner was so rudely interrupted. Today, people look forward to Christmastime as a high point of family togetherness in the dark of winter. Historically, however, it was the most frightening time of year. It wasn’t only the time that the nights were the longest and the coldest. It was also the time when all supernatural forces were thought to be at their strongest.

One thing that the people in Norway feared before Yule was Oskoreia, a wild procession of the spirits of the dead that would race around in the air, often kidnapping people and forcing them to join. Oskoreia could get up to all sorts of mischief—and one of them was to empty the beer in the cellar.

To keep Oskoreia out, it’s important to paint tar crosses on the door to the beer cellar before Yule. One year, a certain man forgot. On Christmas Day, as he came to church, a man came up to him to thank him for his good beer. The first man was confused: “You’ve gotten no beer from me,” he said.

“Oh, yes,” said the second. “Last night while you slept, we drank your beer and filled the cask with horse’s blood.” The man had been kidnapped by Oskoreia and forced to join in their antics.

Back then, the high point of Yule was the big family dinner, made from the best the house could offer. That was one reason why they had to brew. People often think the Christmas beer was a special beer, and it was—but only in that it was usually stronger. Otherwise, the recipe was the same as always.

One reason the Yule fare had to be special was that Yule also was the New Year. At a time when life was precarious, it was important that the New Year turn out well. As the year began, they thought, so it would continue, and that meant a chance for some New Year’s magic. If you save up the best food and then serve it with your strongest beer for Yule, then the New Year should be bountiful.

However, that wasn’t the only reason the food and the ale had to be special. Another is that when the Yule dinner was over, the original Yule custom was very different from what we do today.

After dinner, they’d leave the food and beer on the table and light new candles. They’d put fresh wood on the fire and cover the floor in straw. Then everyone would go to sleep on the straw in the living room, leaving their beds empty. During the night, they believed, their dead ancestors would come back to the house where they’d once lived to enjoy one night of eating, drinking, and sleeping.

That’s also the story behind the dweller in the mound. Almost all farms had burial mounds, and people believed that in the mound lay the farmer who originally cleared the farm. Often, they would know him by name—and, in older times, they would literally worship him with sacrifices of beer. Going to the mound at Yule to pour beer on the grave of the ancestor was an ancient custom, and it was the failure to keep up that sacrifice that had enraged the dweller at Hovland farm.

The dead emerging from burial mounds, prowling the night air, and even coming into the house—there’s a clear theme to the old Yule celebration. Many scholars describe it as a “feast of the dead.” And that is not something specific to Norway—you find the same customs in Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, and Russia, too, suggesting that this really was the true, original meaning of Yule.

The Best You Can Brew

The celebration itself, the veneration of the dead, and the New Year’s magic all required beer because that was by far the best drink the farmers had. So, Yule was closely tied to beer, and it appears to have been that way from the start.

The oldest Norwegian source that mentions Yule is a poem of praise to King Harald Fairhair, dated to the end of the 9th century. In it, the bard says that if it were up to the king, he would “drink Yule” while out in battle. It sounds as if back then one drank Yule rather than celebrate Christmas, and later sources give much the same impression.

So, finally, what was the beer like?

Well, in the 19th century—at that farm in Hardanger, for example—the Yule beer would’ve been the farmhouse ale from each region, pretty much as we know it today. Back then, of course, they always brewed with homemade malt and farmhouse yeast—kveik, in other words.

But what did King Harald Fairhair drink as he sat—unwillingly, we presume, if he’d rather be in battle—in his hall celebrating Yule?

That’s harder to say for certain. We have no recipes nearly as old as the 9th century, and Viking Age sources say almost nothing about how they brewed beer back then.

However, we can make some deductions. Back then, perhaps the most important distinction would be between those who could afford kettles in which to brew and those who had to use hot stones in the mash. The poem “Hymiskvida”—or “The Lay of Hymir,” from the Poetic Edda, first written down in the 13th century—describes the gods Thor and Týr on a quest to borrow a brewing kettle. So, we know that people definitely did brew in kettles by then. And Harald, being a king, surely must have been able to afford one.

Harald came from western Norway, south of the glacier, and this also provides some clues.

In that area they made malt from barley or oats—but only the poor used oats, so his beer would have been pure barley. The malt then was lightly smoked, generally, mostly with birch or alder wood.

Whether his beer would’ve been hopped is harder to say. Hops have been found in beer as early as the 9th century in Norway, and a king would be wise to the latest in fashion. So, quite possibly he did. He probably also used juniper, which we know was used then, just as it was a millennium later.

As far as process, it’s unlikely that it was a boiled beer at that early stage—we can safely guess that it was a raw ale. We can also suppose the lightly smoked barley malt, infusion mashed, was probably lautered through juniper branches and whole-cone hops. (The knowledge that hops must be boiled for full effect probably was not widespread at this time, and the old way of using herbs was in the lauter tun.) Finally, they would run off the wort, cool it to body temperature, and—I would think—ferment it with kveik.

They don’t brew that type of beer anymore in the southern part of western Norway, where Harald Fairhair lived, but in Hornindal, they make beers that are strikingly similar. And the brewers there still brew for Yule every year.

Further north, in Stjørdal, the locals still brew at least 35,000 liters of farmhouse ale every Yule, by one estimate. There, the beer is still smoky, and the association with Yule is still strong. One local brewer says that during Yule, you must drink so much farmhouse ale that when you wipe your behind it hurts as badly as putting snuff on your eyeball. Heavy drinking is hard on the stomach. Note, however, that he says “must”—it’s not an option.

Nor are the dead forgotten.

In many places across Norway—Stjørdal very much included—the custom on Christmas Eve, before the big dinner, is to light candles at the graves of loved ones. These days, at least, we clear the table after eating.

Trying to figure out which cookies taste good with which beers… Who does this? Only magazine editors, and publicists working for brewers and bakers, and whatever brewers or tasters who have been talked into playing along because it might grab likes on the socials. Special exceptions allowed for authors of food-beer pairing books (what a niche!), and brewery events people, and those who pay good money for tickets for the occasional tasting event—because, having been in pandemic mode for nine months, we have sepia-tinted fondness for all sorts of public events that aren’t happening right now.

But listen: Maybe more people should do this? You could do this. It’s fun. Why is it fun? Because beers, and because cookies.

Also: There is an unusual kind of mental exercise involved when you start trying to plug your brain’s attention into your physical senses—really trying to sort out all that data and figure out what it means. What am I tasting here, and what am I tasting there, and what am I tasting when it all comes together? Is it good—and most importantly, why is it good? What can I learn from this strange sugary bacchanal to increase the chances of future hedonistic pleasure?

Downsides: Inevitable bellyache, and the fairly high likelihood of unpleasant pairings along the way.

It’s probably worth it.

Before we get to our winning pairings, a brief explanation of how this came together: A publicist named Tori Allen reached out to us. She represents a few breweries as well as A Haute Cookies in Atlanta. She saw our recent masochistic experiments with Halloween candy and sent the kind of pitch that sounds fun and all but… Look, to be honest, people, this is your fault. A few years ago, we posted an apparently innocuous article about pairing beers with Girl Scout cookies, and you broke our site by clicking on it. Ever since, we have had a hard time resisting this kind of debauchery.

Our tasting panel: Todd DiMatteo, owner/brewer at Good Word Brewing in Duluth, Georgia; Mike Shatzel, restaurateur and founder of the Thin Man Brewery in Buffalo, New York; Jonathan Moxey, head brewer at Rockwell Beer in St. Louis; Trace Redmond, research brewer at Highland Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina; and myself.

Disclosure: A Haute sent us free cookies.

Just to make it harder on them, we asked the brewers not to choose their own beers for the pairings. If they did like me, then they grabbed some likely suspects and a few wild cards from their personal hoard to mix-and-match. It didn’t all work. We left out the duds.

“I’m not sure if it’s possible,” DiMatteo says, “but if I can make a living pairing delicious stout from amazing breweries and incredible cookies from A Haute, sign me up.”

Careful what you wish for, Todd.

The Cookies, and the Pairings

Your own available cookie and beer varieties will vary, but there are elements of these tastings that can be applied to whatever you’ve got. The most important thing with any beer-food pairing—we’ve had to re-learn this lesson often—is to look for comparable intensities. A flavor-bomb cookie is going to overwhelm a subtle beer, and vice versa, obscuring any flavor gestalts that your senses and imagination might otherwise discover.

Snickerdoodle Eggnog

• Urban Chestnut Schnickelfritz Weissbier (St. Louis). Moxey: “The delicate yeast character melds smartly with the cookie’s cinnamon and nutmeg. If there’s such a thing as a ‘sessionable’ beer-and-cookie pairing, here it is. I could do this several times over.”
• Westbound & Down Don’t Hassle the Hef (Idaho Springs, Colorado). Stange: “Banana and clovey-spice notes come out to meet the cookie’s own spices and doughy richness.”
• Westmalle Dubbel (Westmalle, Belgium). Redmond: “The eggnog comes across a little fruity, so the caramel, sweet notes of the dubbel complement the lightly spiced sugar cookie.”
• DSSOLVR Thicc for Life, imperial stout with stroopwafels (Asheville, North Carolina). DiMatteo: “Think brown sugar, fresh-baked brownies, roasted cinnamon sticks, brown-butter waffles drizzled in honey… The cinnamon from the cookie played so well with the beer, it was like they were meant to be together.”
• Prison City Wham Whams, imperial stout with coconut and vanilla beans (Auburn, New York). Shatzel: “Big espresso notes, chocolate, and vanilla... Cinnamon from the cookie adds a nice flavor component.”

Observations: Interesting that two hefeweizens and a dubbel with spicy yeast profile made the cut here.

White Chocolate Chunk Sprinkle

• Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock (Aying, Bavaria, Germany). Moxey: “The load of sprinkles made this the most challenging pairing, but doppelbock was up to it. Celebrator meets the cookie’s substantial sweetness with a potent combination of raisin and prune. The zip of carbonation and warming alcohol provide lift to the richness of the white chocolate chunks.”
  
• St. Bernardus Christmas Ale (Watou, West Flanders, Belgium). Redmond: “This cookie was sweet, with a lot of vanilla flavor. The ale is fruity, festive, and Christmas beer will always work with Christmas cookies.” Stange: “Equally lively and festive, with enough carbonation to break down all those sugary sprinkles, with just enough bitterness to help check the sweetness. The ale’s spice adds a nice accent to the cookie.”
  
• Seven Islands Moctezuma, imperial stout with cocoa nibs and vanilla beans (Corfu, Greece). Shatzel: “The white chocolate melded with the base flavors of the beer, and the abundant amount of sprinkles made for a great pairing.”
  

Observations: Notably, two of us chose the same beer for this cookie without any coordination. The sugary sprinkles were a lot to handle; bubbles helped to break them down.

White Chocolate Chunk Oreo

• Civil Life Porter (St. Louis). Moxey: “Smooth character complements the Oreo’s subtler chocolate. Moderate bitterness is just enough to balance, while creating an overall silky sensation of cookies and cream.”
  
• Anchor Christmas Ale (San Francisco). Stange: “Roasty Hydrox flavor meets the beer’s porterish backbone, while the beer’s spicing accents the cookie’s caramelized-sugars.”
  
• Corporate Ladder/Invasive Species Good Problems, Baklava-inspired imperial stout with honey, pistachio, walnut, vanilla beans, and cinnamon (Palmetto, Florida). DiMatteo: “All these big components work like cogs on the wheel and we get this great equilibrium. The creaminess from the cookie added to the full vanilla from the beer. So dang tasty.”
  
• Prairie Double Dunk, imperial stout with Oreos. (Krebs, Oklahoma). Shatzel: “Obvious reasons. I love Oreos and happened to have a bottle of this in the back of the fridge. Oreo flavors abound.”
  

Observations: Look for roast in the beer to find affinity with the Oreo.

Double Chocolate Chunk Peppermint

• Sierra Nevada Stout (Chico, California). Redmond: “The dark roast character of the stout and clean, dry finish works with the peppermint and chocolate.”
  
• Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout (Brooklyn, New York). Moxey: “The boldness of peppermint enhances the stout’s licorice note, combining to create a refreshing Fernet quality. The rich sweetness of the chocolate chunks find balance against the bitter cocoa and coffee roast of the malt. The intensity of flavor is substantial and well-suited with a traditional Russian imperial stout.”
  
• Bond Brothers Scavenger Hunt, barleywine-stout blend with vanilla, cinnamon, and coffee (Cary, North Carolina). DiMatteo: “Coffee-forward, where cinnamon, bourbon, and vanilla simply round out the finish. The mint and cinnamon play well with the coffee.”
  
• Finback Absorb Green, barrel-aged imperial stout with peanut butter, vanilla, cinnamon, and chocolate (Queens, New York). Shatzel: “This beer was so good, I had to get it on this list. Why not add some peppermint into the mix?”
  
• 2nd Shift Mládek, imperial stout with cinnamon, vanilla, and coffee (St. Louis). Stange: “Mingles together beautifully to become something like a six-dollar mint-chocolate-chip latte.”
  

Observations: The rich, strongly flavored cookies played well with a variety of strongly flavored beers, with chocolate and peppermint finding a familiar kind of friendship.

Double Chocolate Chunk Marshmallow

• Wedge Community Porter (Asheville, North Carolina). Redmond: “Robust chocolate-malt character matches the fudginess of the cookie.”
  
• Off Color Dino S’mores, imperial stout with graham flour, marshmallow, molasses, cocoa nibs, and vanilla bean (Chicago). Moxey: “More marshmallow, more cocoa, more of everything. Dino S’mores tiptoes inside pastry stout territory, but its dry roast character keeps it from being cloying. That provides the pairing definition to avoid becoming a decadent mess.”
  
• Eighth State/3 Sons Penrose, imperial stout with toasted coconut, Ugandan vanilla, and banana (Greenville, South Carolina). DiMatteo: “They nail the flavors listed on the description. This cookie was so good and so rich, honestly, it could’ve paired with any of these beers very easily.”
  
• Good Word Exit Simulation, imperial stout with vanilla and cocoa nibs (Duluth, Georgia). Shatzel: “The stout is quite rich and decadent and needs a cookie to match. Vanilla from the beer and marshmallows paired great.”
  
• Perennial Lunchbox Treasures, imperial stout with marshmallow, vanilla, nutmeg, and cinnamon (St. Louis). Stange: “Dark, cake-battery sin, with the cookie’s marshmallow plainly coming out to meet the marshmallow character in the stout. The beer’s thickness finds its mate in half-baked, I-get-to-lick-the-bowl richness.”
  

Observation: With a cookie this rich and fudgy, there was no apparent upper limit to how decadent the beer could be.

Active preparation time: 20 minutes
Total time: 2½ hours
Serves: 8–10

• One 8–10 lb boneless ham, fully cooked
• 24 oz hard cider
• ½ cup dark brown sugar
• ¾ cup orange juice
• ½ cup apple jelly, warmed
• 1 tsp allspice, ground
• 3 cloves, whole

Preheat oven to 325°F (163°C). Score the ham, being careful not to cut into the meat. Place the ham in a roasting pan with 8 ounces of the hard cider. Bake for 2 hours or to an internal temperature of 145°F (63°C).

While the ham is baking, combine the remaining cider, sugar, orange juice, apple jelly, allspice, and cloves in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. When the ham reaches the designated temperature, use a pastry brush to brush the ham with the glaze. Reduce the oven heat to 250°F (121°C) and bake for an additional 30 minutes, brushing the ham with the glaze every 5–7 minutes.

Remove from oven, slice and serve.

Beer suggestions: Cook with the quality craft cider of your choice. Pair with a beer with a dark fruit and tannin component, such as Deschutes Abyss. If your taste leans more to the sour side, this also pairs well with an oud bruin, such as Rochefort Grand Cru.

Winter is upon us! It’s the time of year to brew and drink strong ales that pack a punch, warm the belly, and delight the palate. There are all kinds of winter and holiday beers, but the sort I want to focus on here warms the belly in a direct way, and not just with alcohol. I’m talking about wassail.

Often associated with caroling and other merriment, wassail was chiefly a drink that was traditionally served spiced and warm. There are a lot of old wassail recipes, and often they play fast and loose with ingredients and spices. (For more about this and some old recipes, see Randy Mosher’s “Wassailing Through the Holidays,” beerandbrewing.com.) It wasn’t just a matter of brewing an ale and warming it up. The ale—or the cider, or wine, or spirit—was only a key ingredient. Others included sugars, spices, more booze … and, of course, fruit.

There are modern examples, too. Mulled wine and cider are obviously fruit-based, but even in Belgium around the holidays you can occasionally spot glühkriek, a warmed-up cherry beer that riffs on German glühwein.

Thus, the long tradition of heating up fruited beer for cold nights survives in new forms.

Festive Fruit

Usually, my own homebrewed wassail gets some holiday-inspired spicy character from different hop combinations. However, winter is also one of the best times of the year for seasonal fruits, many of which come up from sunnier climes—think citrus, tropical, cranberries, and more. (Or check out my article from last year: “Warm It Up with Winter Fruit,” beerand​brewing.com.) This year I’m going in a new direction by combining these two kinds of seasonal beers—I’m bringing those winter fruits into a flavorful holiday wassail.

That’s the idea, in a nutshell: a punch-inspired, warmed-up ale that brings some fruit-forward fun to our yuletide party. Notably, it doesn’t take a fully automated brewhouse or an advanced brewmaster’s degree to do this. This party is open to all levels of brewing experience, whether extract-based or all-grain.

To get there, we have some fun choices to make.

First, let’s talk base beer. There are a lot of directions you could go here, and you might want to dig into some historical recipes for ideas. After doing some reading myself and comparing notes on wassails of the past—and partly inspired by some research on Merseburger bitterbier, a lost style from northern Germany—I’m embracing a type of spiced brown ale. According to Andreas Krennmair, author of Historic Austrian and German Beers for the Home Brewer, the beer was brown, top-fermented, and quite bitter—partly from hops, but also from the addition of orange peel and Gentian root. Without trying to brew an authentic version, I’m happy to use that fascinating tidbit as a creative jumping-off point.

Next, let’s choose our fruit. When it comes to wintertime availability, there is an abundance. There are many types of citrus—such as lemons, grapefruits, limes, and oranges—plus myriad spices and herbs that could complement them. Other fruits include cranberries, kiwis, pears, persimmons, apples—you can even bring your cider to this party—plus all kinds of dried fruits, such as figs or dates. A quick trip to the supermarket will give you an idea of what’s in season. Looking at some of the older recipes—and again, thinking about that Merseburger—I like the idea of embracing lots of orange zest.

Want to add other flavors? Consider anything that reminds us of the holidays—could be cinnamon, chocolate, cloves, ginger, hazelnuts, juniper, vanilla, and so on. A favorite dish or seasonal dessert might inspire you. However, beware of adding too much of a good thing. Keep balance in mind. As I’ve said before, nobody likes drinking a Yankee Candle. As fun as these beers are to brew, they should be at least as fun to drink.

Toward a Recipe to Sing About

For my wassail, I’m thinking of a very dark brown color. If it’s all-grain, you can use two-row, Munich, Vienna, or some combination thereof for the base, but there are a variety of quality liquid or dry malt extracts that can serve as our foundation. For the rest of the grist, let’s think color and body. Some debittered black malt could help us dial in the darkness—or, steeping some chocolate malt can bring some rich brown or auburn hues while adding beautiful cocoa-like depth. Adding a pound of flaked barley, oats, or wheat can help with the body, especially because we’re going to lighten that body somewhat with sugars.

Various sugars can add flavor, help with attenuation, and boost the alcohol. Cane sugar is an easy choice, but not too much—a half-pound (227 g) is plenty, to avoid thinning out the body too much. However, cane sugar and lighter candi sugars and syrups don’t add much flavor. Darker Belgian candi sugars and syrups can add both color and flavor, and so can honey or treacle. You can add these sugars anytime during the boil, but my preference is late, with about five minutes left—or, for more delicately aromatic sugars such as honey or maple syrup, at flameout. Molasses is a traditional option, but get the non-sulfured variety, and use it sparingly, or else you can get some unpleasant off-flavors. (Same goes for any dried fruit—always use unsulfured.)

With hops we want a relatively light touch—this is not an IPA. A few hop additions are enough—one for a balancing bitterness, another for flavor in mid-boil to complement the fruit and other flavorings. Varieties that offer more subtle citrus, spice, or floral aromas are welcome. The key to a great-tasting wassail is remembering that the hops are there to support and balance the malt, fruit, and other flavors. The old Merseburger beer was apparently very bitter, and it must have been an acquired taste, but I want my own wassail to be more festive than immediately challenging.

For yeast, I’m going with a classic English ale yeast of the kind often used for English bitters, pleasantly estery. Your water may vary, but I like to add a bit of calcium chloride to help soften and round out the flavors.

Once you’ve settled on your ingredients, brewing your wassail is pretty straightforward. Heat your water to 156°F (69°C) and steep your specialty malts for about 45 minutes. Once those are out and fully drained, fully dissolve your extracts in the warm water with the heat source switched off, to avoid any scorching—I like to add a little bit at a time, stirring with a long-handled spoon that can scrape any clumps off the bottom. Once dissolved, get it to a rolling boil and add your hops and other additions at the allotted times, with sugars going near the end. Like most other ales, cool your wort, pitch your yeast, and ferment for a couple of weeks or so before packaging.

Choose a name to evoke that holiday feeling—Angry Gnome? Jolly Roger? Bad Santa?—and invite some friends over to share. Light a fire and warm your ale over low heat for about 30 minutes, until steaming—and be sure not to boil it, which will make your alcohol fly away like magic reindeer. Alcohol starts to evaporate at about 172°F (78°C), and you’ll likely find that 140–160°F (60–71°C) is a pleasant range for keeping warm.

You’ll probably love the flavor—but if you don’t, remember that adding some more fruit, spices, sugars, or even straight booze to the pot is well within the spirit of wassail. That ale you brewed is just an ingredient, and the goal is to get those friends to sing.

This dark, fruited-and-spiced barleywine recipe is based on the one brewed by Chicago’s 5 Rabbit Cervecería (in which Randy Mosher is a partner). It’s inspired by Mexican-style ponche navideño (Christmas punch). The fruits and spices are flexible and interchangeable, depending on your taste and what’s available—every abuela has her own ponche recipe. Warm it up, mix it with nog, stick a red-hot poker in it … or just enjoy it in a snifter by the fireside.

For more about winter and holiday beer concoctions, see Wassailing Through the Holidays.

ALL-GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.124
FG: 1.028
IBUs: 75
ABV: 13%

MALT/GRAIN BILL
16.1 lb (7.3 kg) Maris Otter
1.25 lb (567 g) caramel 40L
13.5 oz (383 g) Gambrinus honey malt
11 oz (312 g) Special B
7 oz (198 g) caramel 80L

HOPS & ADDITIONS SCHEDULE
2.3 oz (65 g) Northern Brewer [10.1% AA] at 60 minutes
1 oz (28 g) Columbus [19.4% AA] at 15 minutes
0.5 oz (14 g) cassia buds at whirlpool
0.5 oz (14 g) cinnamon stick(s) at whirlpool
0.3 oz (9 g) cloves at whirlpool
0.3 oz (9 g) bitter orange zest at whirlpool
1 lb (454 g) apple-juice concentrate on Day 4
1 lb (454 g) date syrup on Day 4
14 oz (397 g) guava puree on Day 4
11.5 oz (326 g) white grape–juice concentrate on Day 4

YEAST
Omega OYL-006 British Ale

DIRECTIONS
Mill the grains and mash at 152°F (67°C) for 1 hour, then raise the temperature to 170°F (77°C). Vorlauf until the runnings are clear, then run off into the kettle. Sparge and top up as necessary to get about 6.7 gallons (25 liters)—or more, depending on your evaporation rate. Boil for 75 minutes, adding hops according to the schedule. Put the spices into a nylon bag. At flameout, add the spices to the wort and whirlpool for about 10 minutes. Chill to 65°F (18°C), aerate well, and pitch plenty of health yeast. Ferment at about 68°F (20°C). Once the kräusen starts to fall (after a few days), add the fruit additions to the fermentor and gently stir together. Once fermentation appears complete and has stabilized, rack to secondary and age for at least a few months if possible. Crash, package, and carbonate when ready to consume.

My household adopted beernog as a tradition about a decade ago—we usually make it twice a year: once when we deck the tree and again on Christmas Eve. But credit where due: We first got the idea from Randy Mosher.

His book Tasting Beer has a final chapter entitled, “A Sip Beyond,” and crambambull, aka beernog, is in there among a selection of other old-fashioned mixed ale drinks, such as “flip” and “sack posset.”

“While the idea of adding beer to eggnog may seem strange to us,” Mosher writes, “strong ale would have been pretty much essential to all such early drinks.” (For more from Mosher on those kinds of festive libations, see Wassailing Through the Holidays.)

Our recipe began with his description and has evolved a bit over the years. We weren’t perennial noggers until we started making the stuff fresh, which we did just so we could try mixing it with beer. Once you start making it yourself—it’s easy—you’ll forget about any of those pre-mixed nogs you can buy at the supermarket. (As Mosher writes, they are “beneath consideration.”)

We’ve also found that making this for friends and family tends to produce eggnog converts—with or without the beer. In fact, a nice way to go—especially if you have kids who dig the nog, like ours—is to set out a fresh, non-boozed batch next to a few strong beers and liquors. That way the kids can have some, while the grown-ups get to choose their own nog destinies.

You’ll want to add beer though, once you try it. Its carbonation and comparatively lighter body lighten the mixture’s thick, noggy texture, much in the same way root beer transforms ice cream to make a float. It’s also fun to try different beers in there. I’m partial to a nice strong, dark Belgian ale, with that combination of dark-fruit-and-spice flavor profile and lively carbonation. Doppelbocks, barleywines, and imperial stouts also tend to work well—but don’t be afraid to try more hop-forward IPAs, either.

The Base Nog

Serves: 4

4 eggs
½ cup sugar
12 oz (355 ml) whole milk (1½ cups)
8 oz (237 ml) heavy whipping cream (1 cup)
Freshly ground nutmeg
Cinnamon

Separate the eggs. Using a whisk, beat the sugar into the egg yolks until smooth, then stir in the milk, cream, and fresh nutmeg. With a mixer, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold into the nog mixture. Optionally, whip some of the cream for topping off each glass. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top.

That’s it. Easy. Next comes the fun part.

Booze: Just about anything goes here—brandy, rum, whiskey. I like a half-shot or so of bourbon or dark rum per serving—I like the taste and warmth, but don’t want to overwhelm other flavors. If you’re not pre-mixing, it’s easy to add it to your glass and give it a little stir.

Beernog: Just add a couple of ounces of beer to your glass before adding the nog. Your mileage may vary, but we think a 1:3 beer:nog volume ratio is just about right.

The next day: The nog will keep overnight in the fridge (and arguably improves that way). It’s delicious when mixed with some cold-brew coffee… and, maybe, a splash of bourbon. It is the holidays, after all.

Next crowne the bowle full
With gentle Lambs wooll,
Adde sugare nutmeg and ginger
With store of ale too
And thus ye must doe,
to make the Wassaile a swinger.
—Robert Herrick, Twelfth Night (1648)

Wassailing conjures up images of scarf-draped, rosy-cheeked carolers singing to orphans and shut-ins in their snow-globe village, Hallmark-card style. You can think whatever nostalgic thing you like, but the fact is, “wassail” is a noun as much as it is a verb, and the custom is really about drinking, not singing.

Today, every beer is a self-evident masterpiece, but in earlier times, it was just another ingredient to be mixed into whatever libation suited the occasion. We think nothing of mixing fine bourbon into a Manhattan or other cocktail. So why be precious about beer?

The old recipes are pretty fascinating, and whenever I’ve tried them, they’ve been as tasty as they are attention-getting. Nothing enlivens a festive gathering more than firing up a propane torch to coax a metal bar to orange-heat, then plunging it screaming into a cauldron of sweetened, spiced ale. Do try this at home.

The old books have a ton of these recipes. A few are cider-based, but most revolve around ale. Some include fortified wine, such as Madeira, or spirits, such as rum. These are sort of halfway between beer and dessert and more alcoholic than either—this is the festive season, remember. In those days, sugar itself was something to celebrate, and because of its expense, something to be locked away from prying hands.

Some beer-based drinks were meant to be served cool, but quite a few were heated. People back then spent a lot more non-voluntary outdoor time than we do, and before central heating and down vests, people often had trouble staying warm. Hot beverages put heat directly into the body’s core. Fireplaces were universal, so devices in the shape of cones or slippers were filled with ale and shoved in the coals to warm. Many beer drinks had some starchy nourishment added in the form of oatmeal or toasted bread.

Many have onomatopoeic names–syllabub, for example–or monikers that celebrated the visuals. “Yard of flannel,” another name for flip, was about the “yard” of creamy tan liquid that an expert mixologist could create as the drink was poured back and forth between cups to enhance frothing. There are a ton of fascinating traditions around these drinks. One is the use of large pass-around drinking vessels, currently banished for sanitary reasons. Flip, which we’ll get to shortly, used elegant glass tumblers, some as large as small wastebaskets.

The common ingredients are ale, usually another form of alcohol (or two), a sweetener, and some spices—ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove being the most universal. Sugar should be unrefined. I like piloncillo or jaggery (cane and palm sugars from Latin/Indian markets), but since they’re in lump form, they’ll need to be shaved or broken up to dissolve. Don’t use brown sugar; it’s just white sugar with molasses added. It’s best to not use powdered spices, since they add a muddy glumness that’s challenging to filter out. If the recipe calls for fortified wine, the $10 stuff works just fine—save your coin for the foie gras. If you’re adding spirits, do so at the end, or let people spike their own cup to suit their taste. A Crock-Pot is a pretty useful tool to heat them, or to maintain warmth after heating. An extra cinnamon stick and a slab of sweet orange make nice garnishes.

Originally, all of these drinks would have featured amber-to-brown strong ale, hoppy or not. A malty Scotch ale works pretty well, and even a doppelbock will serve. A Belgian dubbel or strong dark ale is almost too good to transform in this way, but hey, it’s the holidays. An imperial brown ale is also a good choice. Since these concoctions universally have sugar, they can handle some hops, but stay away from burly West Coast interpretations—or go ahead, knowing what you’re getting. A bottle of Flemish red/brown ale in the mix can add a little wood-aged tang. If you want to use your favorite spiced holiday ale, back off the added spices or eliminate them so you don’t overdo it.

A Few Recipes & Twists

Braggot

Let’s start at the beginning. Here’s the oldest one I’ve got, a recipe for a “Bragotte,” from Thomas Wright’s 1857 dictionary, Provincial Dialects, quoting a 14th century manuscript:

Take to x gallons of ale, iij potell of fyne worte and iij quartis of hony, and put thereto canell [cinnamon] oz: iiij, peper schort or long oz: iiij, galingale [a sort of rush] oz: 1 and clowys [cloves] oz i, and gingiver oz ij.

That old format is tough, but the recipe’s all there—see the box above left. Braggot (there are innumerable spellings) is a general term for a beer-mead hybrid. The recipe above, as printed in John Bickerdyke’s evocative 19th century masterpiece, The Curiosities of Ale and Beer, doesn’t mention whether this was a drink served warm or cool. Looking at it, I’d guess it would be equally tasty either way. Given the small amount of wort, I’d say you can skip it, but some first runnings from brew day might be worthy. Just mix it all up, stirring vigorously to fully incorporate the honey and prevent it from caramelizing as it warms. You probably want to keep it warm for 30 minutes or more before serving, to fully incorporate the spices.

Beernog

This is the easiest way to get started with these drinks. I won’t burn up column inches with a recipe, since there are commercial versions of eggnog (artisanal dairies are best!), or you can find a recipe to make it from scratch. The idea is to mix two parts of fresh, nonalcoholic eggnog with one part strong, dark ale. If you’re using a hoppy beer, you may want to add a little more sugar in the form of maple syrup or raw simple syrup (sugar dissolves very slowly in a cold drink). Then, toss in a half-shot of bourbon, dark rum, or brandy, and stir it up. This concoction made me recognize that I really do like eggnog if it’s lightened up just a little with something tasty (read: beer).

If you’re the gadget-loving type and want a purpose-built poker that’s easy to clean and that can be broken down for easier storage (or customized with additional fire poker and roaster tips), the Beer Caramelizer from 1571f.com is the only such product we’ve ever come across. At $34.99 plus shipping, it’s a pricey single-purpose tool, but the thoughtful design even allows you to thread a tap handle onto the stainless steel rod.

Flip, or Yard of Flannel

This tastes pretty much like liquid cookie dough. In addition to ale, sugar, and spices, it incorporates eggs. To avoid curdling, it must be very gently cooked and never heated above 180°F (82 °C), so a good thermometer is recommended. A double boiler allows the gentlest heating.

To make a batch, place in a saucepan or double boiler:

• 2 pints (946 ml) strong ale
  
• 4 Tbs (50 g) piloncillo or muscovado sugar
  
• 1–2 cinnamon sticks
  
• 2–4 whole cloves
  
• 1 lemon’s zest (use a sharp knife or peeler), cut into strips
  

Heat to simmer, no more than 180°F (82 °C), then turn off the heat and remove the cinnamon and other solid ingredients. Beat four eggs and gradually add some of the ale mixture to the eggs, stirring steadily. Then, slowly add the egg-ale mixture back to the rest of the drink, beating furiously until foamy.

Then comes the showstopper: thrusting a red-hot poker into the beverage. Originally, this was a “loggerhead,” an iron bar with a swollen end employed to heat tar and pitch. A heavy fireplace poker will work, but you want something with at least a pound of mass. I have a disk of stainless steel about the size of a fat hamburger patty on a long handle. You want it red hot or better. I don’t have to tell you to not be an idiot around this dangerous object. Best to torch this to a red-hot glow outside—away from the children, please.

When you plunge it in, the flip will bubble vigorously and add some heat to the mix, depending on how large and how hot your loggerhead substitute is. Best to have the mix at about 150°F (66°C), so it won’t overheat and curdle. This transfer of heat will caramelize the sugar and eggs, which creates the rich cookie-dough taste. Two ounces of good aged rum, brandy, or whiskey can be added at this point.

Space prevents me from detailing more than a few recipes here, so if this is your kind of thing, here are a few tantalizing clues to research over the holidays: wassail-bowl and its offspring, lamb’s wool, ale-brue/ale-berry, syllabub, buttered ale, sack posset, and Oxford grace cup. Waes hael!

Arriving like a balm after a difficult year, the 46th edition of Anchor Brewing’s annual holiday warmer is its darkest and strongest yet. It appears on the watch of a new brewmaster, Tom Riley, who took over in August to become only the fourth there since Fritz Maytag took the helm in 1965.

Anchor always keeps this recipe under wraps, but Riley was willing to discuss some aspects of this year’s formulation. The 2020 Christmas Ale is a robust but balanced porterish brown ale of 7 percent ABV, which—based on my own tasting notes—has an accent of woodsy, juniper-like spicing. That spice is evident in the nose but doesn’t dominate the flavor, which is quite smooth, softly roasted, and drinks well below its strength.

CBB// I think a lot of people realize the Christmas Ale recipe changes every year, but I’m not sure how many of us have a broader sense of how it’s evolved. Please tell us about how the beer has changed over the years.

TR// In 1975, former Anchor brewmaster Fritz Maytag had the idea to release a limited-edition holiday brew with an ever-changing, top-secret recipe that would stir excitement each year. We have been widely considered the makers of America’s first craft beer, the first modern American IPA, and the first porter, so Fritz wanted to add to that list with the first hand-crafted holiday beer in America.

With the beer’s closely guarded recipe, he was determined to create a fun mystery for people to look forward to every holiday season, with Christmas Ale. Along with the ever-changing recipe was a hand-drawn label of a tree that changed every year, which has been designed to reflect the current times. Over 45 years, those aspects have remained the same.

You can clearly see the difference between our 1975 and 2020 editions if you set them side by side. In the 1970s, Christmas Ale was a pale ale. Our 2020 Christmas Ale is firmly a spiced brown ale. You can certainly tell that we have experimented with more exotic spices and hops over the years to arrive at the darkest Christmas Ale yet, with the highest ABV at 7 percent.

CBB// Specifically, with the 2020 edition, what’s different this year from past years?

TR// Christmas Ale delivers a new taste every year. Our spice blend is constantly evolving based on what Anchor fans love, as well as the current times. In recent years, you can taste more exotic spices and flavors of resinous pine.

In 2020, however, it made sense for us to arrive at a more traditional and approachable spice blend with a large malt build. We peeled back some of the spice layers of recent recipes to create a subtly spiced brown ale with a more silky and chocolaty malt, bursting with classic holiday flavors that remind us of a different time—when it was normal to spend this special season with a multitude of friends and family. The 2020 Christmas Ale is an easy-drinking winter warmer for a year that’s anything but traditional.

CBB// This is your first year brewing the Christmas Ale as brewmaster. Did you already have ideas in mind about how it might be tweaked on your watch? Or, did this difficult year have an impact on the recipe—i.e., after 2020, maybe we could all use that extra ABV kick?

TR// When our previous brewmaster [Scott Ungermann] left in August of this year, the 2020 Christmas Ale had already been settled on, and we were beginning to brew. As assistant brewmaster during that time, I had a big part in developing the beer, so I already knew what we were trying to do. With such a difficult year, we figured it only appropriate to dial up the ABV and the comforting flavor notes.

CBB// What advice would you have for other brewers out there, for brewing a great holiday ale—whatever that means to you?

TR// There’s so much more that goes into the process of brewing a holiday ale than just flavor. It’s often said that the holidays are the greatest time of year, but it is also a difficult season for many, especially during a pandemic. As Christmas Ale is only available for a short time, we want it to carry as much significance as possible.

Create a label that fits in with the current times and inspires beer drinkers. For instance, this year our hand-drawn label shows The Three Graces, a trio of sequoia trees that symbolize joy, hope, and flowering. During a year when so many of us were forced to spend time apart, we wanted our holiday ale to represent togetherness. Make a beer that pays homage to the year and can bring people together.