Hip Hops: December 2007 Archives

It is Christmas Eve, heathens. Time to make a chestnut fire, a batch of fresh bread and don wool socks. Of course, that can be a tall order if you have to, oh, say, work around the clock or spend Christmas apart from dudes and family. Our fallback many a winter — the only thing we’ve found that can replace the holiday cheer of mom attempting vegan cookies or skipping church to make snow angels in your parent’s yard — has been seasonal ales, big bombers of winter beer and frothy Christmas specials. At the risk of sounding like depressed alkies who lean on a bottle for Christmas spirit, consider that the perfect winter beer will offer the triumvirate mentioned above: chestnuts and fresh bread in the palate, and enough booze to keep your feet (and soul) warm. So, here’s a first stab at some of the better winter beers we’ve had this December, with more to come. More importantly, it’s not too late to run out and grab a couple as stocking stuffers…

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale

A light molasses pour, fluff bubbles with waft of carbo-buzz, subtle roasted chestnuts and malt sugar undertones — this is a safe-bet table-pleaser. Whereas some of the St. Bernardus brews are the idyllic frothy beverage emitted from the barrel around the neck of a life-saving St. Bernard, this Christmas ale is like the candy cane mead swigged by a naughty, Belgian shopping mall Santa.

Dairy Pairy: Saenkanter Gouda
Soundtrack: Dandy Warhol’s “Little Drummer Boy”

Avery’s Old Jubilation Ale

You know the old Budweiser ads with steeds pumping their sinewy leg muscles through snow and ice with a Bud sleigh behind ‘em? Now get ready for the real thing. This Colorado brewery’s winter ale is a standout for one reason: they don’t go sprinkling spices in their kegs like they’re baking holiday ho-hos — just a strong mahogany syrup made of five malts, no added herbs, and lots of nutty mellowness. One of the better meal pints this year; it won’t mess with your perfectly spiced vegan pig loin.

Dairy Pairy: Ossau-Iraty
Soundtrack: Spiritualized’s “Oh Happy Day”

Deschutes’ Jubel

Oregon flagship brewers went all ‘Peace On Earth’ with this year’s holiday brew. It’s a rare attempt at even-handed hopping and malting. Flowery juniper pine-sol hits first, crystal clear sipping upfront, then rounded out by a robust, if jumbled, baker’s chocolate and oven-scented malts after-taste. Good, not great, but still plenty worth serving to weaker-budded buddies.

Dairy Pairy: Fig cake
Soundtrack: Bright Eye’s “Road to Joy”

Alesmith’s Yulesmith Holiday Ale

It feels like just yesterday that we were scarfing blistered peanuts, diving for cover from the neighborhood kids’ firecracker wars and glugging on the red-and-blue tinted Alesmith Hoilday ale for Fourth of July. Now we’re decking the halls with their other holiday seasonal and ‘tis the mother f-ing season. This bomber pours red-copper brown like a rusty faucet and tastes like a malt wreath fell in your double IPA. Style-wise, Yulesmith is actually a bit like Jubel: malty and hoppy at once, but they pull it off with flying colors.

Dairy Pairy: Tuxford And Tebbet's Mature Black Wax Cheddar
Soundtrack: Belle and Sebastian’s “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”

N’Ice Chouffe

How do goblins celebrate Christ’s birth, you might ask? Well the ones behind the Belgian Brewerie d’Anchouffe throw a bunch of orange peel and fresh thyme in their batches of brown ale and let it get spicy. At a recent house party we stuck a bottle of this elfin nectar in the freezer and pulled it out just as ice was starting to congregate around the bottle. Corked and poured, this beer came out a muddy, herby slurpy. The thyme coulda been stronger for us garden geeks, but the citrus was perfectly balanced against medicinal malt notes. A good 750 ml for late-night Christmas shopping runs or Home Alone-style holiday heists, perhaps, or of course outdoor fire parties with gnomes.

Dairy Pairy: Boulette d'Avesnes, washed with beer and spices
Soundtrack: Grandaddy’s “Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland”

There will always be central aspects of the holiday season that are total bummers. For some its traveling long distances crammed up against smelly strangers in a metal box impossibly cruising tens of thousands of feet above the surface of the planet: screaming children placed at all corners like mentally mutilating motion sensors. Others sweat the savagery of the shopping days with names that smack of biblical plagues, or chug horrendous herbal-speed-sodie-pops to shakingly click on once in a year low prices at ungoldy hours.

Our horror for the holidays is a hydra with one head: Pumpkin Ale. While we like to consider ourselves non-haters, we believe there is a special circle of hell for the makers of oft ubiquitous after October bottles that bear cutesy pictures of harvest squash, jack-o-lanterns, and other autumnal ephemera. When another pie tasting beer pops up in the stead of a truly wonderful winter ale we cry a little…we die a little.

Usually, this blatantly biased and unfair critique is leveled against the most deserving of bummer-breweries. This year the emperor’s unsightly ass was exposed with a suggestion from Alex, the beer buyer and expert-extraordinaire of Red Carpet in Glendale. While staring at the cases, arms filling with brews, we set upon the slightly campy looking bottle to the untrue North. Ichabod Ale will undoubtedly be the only pumpkin ale to grace this blog, graceful commentary in tow. The brew is a very rare seasonal selection from the Alpine Beer Company, when we bought ours a few weeks back there were a rumored three cases in Los Angeles, two of them in front of us.

Why did Ichabod avoid the Axe? Firstly this is no “special release” from Sam Adams. Alpine is a tiny brewery and you can taste the small batch vibe before the beer is in your mouth. The flavors immediately turn towards Flanders, or at least Michigan, where sour and crisp flavors set the stage for what few sugar and spice notes play in the finish. The beer tastes like it’s spent some quality time in beautiful wood barrels nestled in snowdrifts atop pointy hills. The addition of pumpkin in this case is in reverence to the age-old equation of fruit+time=booze. No dribbling of an extract from New Jersey over sterile brew towers for Alpine; which means none of that nonsense for you. You taste the room where this beer was made before you taste the time of the year, and for us that’s the real merry maker.

Dairy Pairy: Senne-flada, an unpasteurised washed rind cows milk cheese from the Swiss Alps.
Soundtrack: Dawn Penn's “No, No, No”