Festive beers – a rough guide

By Phil Mellows

In the middle of November the Hand in Hand brewpub in Brighton staged an unusual ceremony in which a red-hot poker was plunged into pints of Hand Brew Co’s old ale, Kora, to mark the dark beer style’s return to the bar after its long summer holiday.

The brew bubbled, hissed, steamed and overflowed, leaving a warmer, and slightly caramelised drink. There was a time when this was common practice. My dad, who was brought up in a pub between the world wars, remembered pokers being heated in the open fire in winter so customers could heat their mild ale to taste. There were no reports of casualties.

These days it seems to me that beer pokering is a great theatrical way to introduce the festive season, when plain beers are not enough and the dark depths of winter demands something special, an extra spice.

Brewers are all over the opportunity, of course, and we are deluged with a large variety of Christmas beers – but what to choose? We don’t like to be too prescriptive here at Beer Breaks. Everyone will have their preferences. But we thought it might be useful to provide a sketch map of the options.

Kora itself, which is a hefty 6.5% abv, provides a starting point. This is a time when those strong, dark beers you don’t really fancy on a hot summer’s day, come into their own, designed to be slowly sipped and savoured late into the evening, or to match the flavours of Christmas pudding at the table.

Now’s the moment when you stop looking at that big bottle of 11% imperial stout and contemplate actually opening it, perhaps to share. After all, it’s no stronger than wine.

Last year it was Innis & Gunn’s Vanishing Point for me. The Scottish brewer, which has taprooms in Edinburgh and Glasgow if you’re up that way, specialises in barrel-aging which softens and sweetens the alcohol harshness, and the latest iteration of Vanishing Point is matured for a whole year in casks that have formerly held Glenlivet whisky.

This year Innis & Gunn has also brought out a couple of interesting specials in smaller 300ml bottles at a mere 7% abv – one aged in whisky casks and the other in demerara rum – which you could quite justifiably drink all by yourself.

Festive beers don’t need to be dark, though, and my great discovery in 2023 was Epochal Brewery’s Christmas Day. Based on a historic Scottish stock pale ale recipe, the latest version is a rich gold, fermented in Rioja wine barrels and laced with clementines for that Christmassy feel.

Or you could turn sour. This style of beer is good at carrying festive flavours and, in contrast to those smooth stouts, can bring a zing to your palate. I make no excuse for staying in Scotland here, because Edinburgh’s Vault City has a knack for balancing bold flavours and it has a beery Buck’s Fizz to start your day or a Sugarplum Spritz among other seasonal varieties.

But what if you’re off the alcohol? Or are ‘zebra striping’, alternating regular beers with alcohol frees to pace yourself – which pundits are predicting will be a big thing this Christmas. Mash Gang is arguably the brewer that can give you the festive edge you need to feel a part of the party and its 0.5% Lesser Evil is a tempting cherry chocolate stout.

I have my regular favourites, too, from Britain’s traditional brewers: Fuller’s Vintage Ale, Greene King’s Strong Suffolk, Harvey’s Christmas Ale (or Imperial Extra Double Stout) Shepherd Neame’s Christmas Ale, and St Austell has a 7.4% Extra Special Tribute out this year.

And we haven’t even mentioned the Belgians, who really like to spice it up for the festivities – but you can explore them for yourself. I need a lie down just thinking about it.

Merry Christmas!

Photo: O Christmas Beer by quinn.anya is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.