The Spirit World

In mid to late November you’ll start seeing some wonderful new bottles appear on the shelves of your local beer retailer: the Christmas and Winter Ales. These darker, hoppier, stronger ales make the holiday season an exciting time to be sampling beer.

Almost every brewery has some kind of special Christmas or Winter Ale. Every year in early December I make a special trip to my local beer retailer and buy up one to three bottles of every Christmas or Winter Ale they have. Having this diverse stock of holiday beers in my beer cellar gives me the possibility of trying something new almost every evening and contributes to the relative increase of warmth and joyousness in the house when it is cold and dark outside (for us northern hemisphere dwellers).

One of my favorites each year is the Delirium Noël, a creamy, dark brown Belgian ale. Delirium Noël and the other Delirium beers (Nocturnum and Tremens) are brewed by the Huyghe-Melle brewery outside of Ghent in Belgium. A goblet of this full bodied beer is ideal for sipping while snuggled up in front of the fireplace. Several other Belgian Christmas ales are available at most beer retailers. Corsendonk Christmas Ale (8.5% ABV) is dark like the Delirium Noël, but is less sweet and has a lighter body. Abbey Affligem’s Christmas Ale is also called Noël. It’s 9 percent alcohol level makes for a warming beer. This level of alcohol is typical for a Belgian Christmas Ale. The idea is not just for the brewer to show off by making a high alcohol beer, but to make a beer that is more comforting and warming for this cold time of year. The higher alcohol levels invite more contemplative enjoyment of the beer. These are not beers for guzzling; these beers should be savored and sipped slowly.

When serving these Belgian Christmas ales you will want to make sure that you don’t drink them when they are too cold. My recommendation is that you invest in a proper beer cellar. Mine is just a chest freezer with the thermostat replaced so that I can keep my beers at 55°F (13 C). If you only have one refrigerator and your beer shares space with your steaks, milk, and eggs, then you will want to take your Christmas ale out of the fridge at least fifteen minutes prior to opening the bottle. This gives the beer time to warm up a bit. For large bottles (750 ml) I would suggest letting the beer sit at room temperature for half an hour before opening. These beers are intended to be drunk at higher temperatures. The flavor and full character of the beer begins to come out when the beer is almost at room temperature (during the winter room temperature is probably 65 to 68°F).

This isn’t an exhaustive list of the Belgian Christmas ales available, but it’s a good starting point if you haven’t ever tried a Christmas ale or a Belgian style beer before. In the next post I’ll highlight three Christmas ales brewed in the United States.