For today’s Advent beer pick we travel to France, and the Page 24 Brewery, part of Brasserie St. Germain. Every year they brew up their Bière de Noël (Christmas beer), a Bière de Garde that comes in at 6.9% alcohol by volume, with specialty malts and all locally-grown French hops.

Their description (run through Google Translate):

True to the tradition of the Christmas beers brewed by the end of the year, this warm beer is available from mid November.

Christmas beer is an amber beer whose color comes exclusively from special malts used in the brewing. Caramel malt and malt black bring toasted and roasted notes that give it a long finish. The hopping is 100% done with the variety grown Challenger in Nord Pas de Calais.

Page 24 does not just use local hops, they also source local barely and use sugar from local beets. (Jeff Alworth wrote a bit about that here.) Here in the United States, Shelton Brothers imports the Page 24 lineup including this Christmas specialty. Cheers!

Untappd. BeerAdvocate. RateBeer. Facebook.