No discussion of Christmas beer is complete without talking about Belgian Christmas beers. The Belgians are not shy about brewing rich beers with a variety of spices as end-of-the-year specialties, and arguably our modern notion of “Christmas beer” can be credited to the breweries of Belgium. I always include some Belgian selections in each year’s Beer Advent Calendar, and this year the first of those is Gauloise Christmas from Brasserie du Bocq.

Brasserie du Bocq was founded in 1858 by farmer Martin Belot in the small village of Purnode in the Bocq River valley of southern Belgium. After the first World War, the family brewery first released La Gauloise, which remains the oldest of its brands, though its Christmas ale dates only to 2013.

Gauloise Christmas is 8.1% alcohol by volume and has the following notes from the brewery’s English version page:

Appearance: Brown with a dark robe, generous and fine white foam.
Nose: Rich with a touch of coriander and liquorice.
Taste: Round, heady, pleasant aromas of the special malts used.
Remark: tasting between 8 ° and 12 °, typical ‘end of the year’ beer (high-end beer to enjoy with wisdom with family and friends).

I reached out to the brewery for more information and brewmaster and production manager Xavier Yernaux shared a few words about the beer:

The taste base is orange, spices and classical BOCQ 4VinylGuiaicol (clove) and caramel.

I can’t explain complete recipe but don’t you feel something like porto, not madère, really porto? This touch was our target.

And aging is one of the best: Xmas is one my favourite (with GAULOISE Ambrée, Blanche de Namur, GAULOISE Brune and Triple Moine, if we speak about our products), certainly 1 or 2 year aged.

Find Brasserie du Bocq Gauloise Christmas on:

• Untappd
• BeerAdvocate
• RateBeer
• Facebook

Image credits: Top image, the brewery’s Facebook page; other, website