Can you believe it’s the first of December already? The year has flown by and with Thanksgiving arriving later this year it seems like Christmas is nearly upon us (it is!). Of course December means the return of one of my favorite blog features here, the annual Beer Advent Calendar, now in its ninth year! Each day of December up until Christmas I select and highlight an appropriately-themed beer in the manner of the traditional Advent calendar, albeit in a bloggy-beer sort of way.

The first Advent beer of 2013 is Big Time Brewery‘s Yulefest Christmas Ale. Big Time is located in Seattle and, founded in 1988, is billed as Seattle’s oldest brewpub. They don’t bottle their beers—most of the 1500 barrels they brew each year are served on-premise, though a few Seattle taverns also carry their beers—so you will need to make a pilgrimage to the Emerald City to enjoy this beer.

Yulefest is a Winter Warmer and described by the brewery as:

As a seasonal answer to the Northwest’s dark and rainy months, our special Christmas Ale is full bodied, reddish brown and moderately strong. The enticing flavor combination of chocolate malt and spicy Northwest hops provide a welcome respite to a long winter’s night. OG 17 plato 1.068 5.2% alcohol by weight.

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