Happy Friday! For today’s Advent beer pick we travel to East Hartford, Connecticut, home of the Olde Burnside Brewing Company, founded in 2000 at the location of the historic Burnside Ice Company. Olde Burnside specializes in “traditional ales with a Scottish twist” so it’s appropriate that their holiday ale is a Wee Heavy: Father Christmas Highland Ale.

It’s a hefty 9.6% alcohol by volume, and they say it’s their “Ten Penny Reserve with cherry added after fermentation.” And though I can’t find attribution or provenance for sure (it appears to be from 2012), I do like the opening description of this beer on the BeerAdvocate page:

Legend has it that Father Christmas wandered through Scottish villages gathering a merry following and distributing sweets to children and “wee heavy,” a cheery libation, to adults.

“Father Christmas” was a precursor to the modern Santa Claus, and in this day and age is indistinguishable from the latter. Regardless, be sure to enjoy a bottle of this cheery libation this year.

Untappd. BeerAdvocate. RateBeer. Facebook.