’Tis the season of good beer

This year the shoot is happening in her flat, and she was expecting the wines to be delivered any day.

“Are the wines you choose for Christmas any different from what you’d drink through the rest of the year?” I asked.

“No, not really,” she replied. “Prosecco’s going to be very big this year, of course, but you don’t get special Christmas wines.”

Big guns​

Christmas is, of course, the highlight of the drinking year. It’s when we all bring out the big guns and treat ourselves to something special. I’m very happy for my friend that she gets to have a blast doing this feature for a national newspaper. Similar features will doubtless run in every other national newspaper, weekend supplement and food and drink magazine, as they do every year.

I have no problem with this at all. I love a posh Kiwi Sauvignon or silky Condrieu with the turkey. 

But what really astonishes me is that few, if any, of those publications will carry a similar feature on beers for Christmas.

What makes this doubly frustrating is that unlike wine, it’s not just a case of choosing something suitable for a celebration from drinks that are available all the year round.

Seasonal Christmas ales and winter warmers are being released by hundreds of breweries, many of them tailored specifically to suit the flavours and moods of the festive season. Yet this is seemingly less interesting, less newsworthy, that reminding us yet again that Prosecco is a great value substitute for Champagne.

Even the PMA​ has run two features on Christmas drinks in the past few weeks, neither of which even mentions the word beer.

Celebration​

There’s no set style definition of a Christmas ale or winter warmer. They could be red, brown or black, anything from 4% ABV to 11% ABV, and flavoured with whatever adjuncts the brewer feels like throwing in the kettle. Christmas is a time for celebration after all, a time for easing the discipline and seriousness we need to get through the rest of the year.

But it’s not just random: in their use of spices, today’s Christmas beers echo the possets, cups and wassails of Christmas through the ages, particularly the age of Dickens. Our constitutions were clearly made of stronger stuff back then: in 1936 the George Inn in Southwark, south-east London, celebrated with the recreation of one posset recipe, reputedly invented by Sir Walter Raleigh, which consisted of ale, three quarts of cream, mace, nutmeg, sherry and sugar, and was described as “smooth and fragrant”.

Another from Jesus College, Oxford, contained strong ale, nutmeg, ginger, sherry and lemon. Spices such as nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon remain popular in Christmas ales, and the stronger examples definitely develop sherry-like notes. They go wonderfully well with Christmas pudding, cake or strong cheese.

Beyond ales that are specifically brewed for Christmas, other styles really come into their own. Rich premium ales complete that magical pub moment when the log fire is burning and the weather is lashing outside. Flemish Champagne beers are both perfect celebration drinks at parties and stand up well to the car crash of different flavours that is Christmas dinner.

Chocolate stout or porter is the perfect indulgence as you fill the corners and fall asleep in front of the telly. And barley wines, old ales and Belgian quadrupels round off the night with oodles of class when you don’t have to get up the following day.

Missing out​

I just don’t get it. We’re increasingly interested in seasonality, and Christmas beer is just about the most seasonal drink there is (don’t mention advocaat, please). Our perceptions of Christmas are dominated by Dickens, and this is what he and his characters drank at Christmas. Beer is cheaper than wine, sherry or Champagne, but can be just as strong, celebratory, complex or posh.

Beer is our national drink, and it presents itself in more wonderful and intriguing ways at Christmas than it does at any other time of year. Anyone who simply turns to wine and spirits over the coming month is really missing out.

And, sadly, that’s most of us.