December and the holiday season are upon us again! This is my favorite time of year, especially here on the Brew Site: I have far too much fun picking beers for my daily Advent Beer Calendar and blogging about them. This is the third year now I’ve been running this … Continue reading

Merry Christmas all! I hope everybody got what they asked for and is having a good holiday. I’ll probably be mostly offline for the next couple of days (although I should have my latest 50 Beers to Drink post up on Wednesday)… in the meantime, I wanted to recap the … Continue reading

You thought I’d pick a beer with "Christmas" or something in the name for the final day, didn’t you? Faked you out! I went with Frank Costanza’s fictional holiday of Festivus because—well, why not? 🙂 Sonoran Brewing Company in Arizona brews their Festivus Ale this time of year, an American … Continue reading

Today is my birthday (yay!), so I thought I’d be totally self-indulgent in my beer pick. This is not nominally a holiday-themed beer, but it’s a high-alcohol, special release ale from Stone Brewing: Imperial Russian Stout. Stone is making some of the best American beer around, and I can’t think … Continue reading

To commemorate the winter solstice, I chose an appropriate beer: Solstice d’Hiver, from the Brasserie Dieu de Ciel brewpub in Montréal. In their own words: This noble winter beer is brown in colour with flaming red highlights. It has a complex aroma of fruits, alcohol and hops. Its taste is … Continue reading

Today’s pick is YuleSmith Holiday Ale, brought to you by AleSmith Brewing. AleSmith actually makes two versions of this beer: one in winter, and one in summer (strangely enough). Of their winter version, they say: For the winter season, YuleSmith is brewed as an Imperial Red Ale. This version is … Continue reading

Today I’m picking another beer that I also selected last year: La Choulette de Noël. This Bière de Garde from France is, like all of this style, very complex and subtle at the same time. Their page notes, Habillée d’ambre brun aux chatoyants reflets cuivrés, coiffée d’une belle mousse beige … Continue reading

Not to confuse anybody with a holiday beer that rhymes with Bad Elf (and a controversy, to boot), but today’s pick is Tröegs The Mad Elf. A bottle of this might make you mad, as well! It’s an 11% alcohol ale brewed with honey and cherries, which lend it a … Continue reading

I wanted to pick a German beer somewhere along the way, and settled today on Hochstift Weihnachts Bier, a Christmas-themed Bock ("Weihnachten" is "Christmas" in German). What can I tell you about this beer? Not much, since the page is entirely in German and there’s only one review so far … Continue reading

Today I’m getting really local: Central Oregon’s own Cascade Lakes Brewing‘s Santa’s Little Helper. This is a tidy little winter warmer that fills a comfortable niche at 6.4% alcohol. It’s what I drink during the winter months whenever I’m down at their Lodge. Its BeerAdvocate page thus far only has … Continue reading