The 12 Beers of Christmas, or Getting Through Your Family Reunion

December is back in full effect and that means the holiday season is upon us. In the midst of all the long family reunions, the hectic gift giving, the secretive gift returning, and navigating through streets of snow, we will undoubtedly run out of energy far too soon and this will without a doubt result in our eating way too much.... ham? Roast beef? Chinese food? Gingerbread? I just realized I'm not quite sure what a traditional Christmas meal is supposed to be.

According to Will Ferrell, the traditional meal is diabetes. 

Well, regardless of what you may find yourself feasting on later this month, you will most definitely find yourself in need of a tasty beverage to wash it down with. A tasty alcoholic beverage, perhaps? Fortunately for everybody involved, a winter seasonal beer is the best kind of seasonal beer. Winter beers are usually very malt and spice heavy and are crammed with flavor and body, in contrast to their warm weather counterparts, which tend to be citrusy and light. Most importantly, however, is that the majority of these beers tend to clock in at about 7-10% abv, significantly higher than your average domestic lager. More flavor and more alcohol? Shut up and take my money..

The type of beer brewed for colder weather varies a lot from brewery to brewery, but most choose to go with one of the following styles for their winter special: Belgian dark, old ale, stout, IPA, winter warmer, and porter. With so many brewers out there churning out so many different beers, it can be difficult to decide which one to grant the honor of blacking out to. The correct answer is all of them, but because most people refused to accept that as a legitimate response, in the name of science, a few of my friends and I have done you, the general public, the favor of testing 12 winter seasonals and rating them. All so you can have the pleasure of drinking the best and skipping the rest. We drank each in succession and gave a letter grade between F and A+, with some more creative grades mixed in here and there. The grading was done while keeping in mind that these beers were supposed to be winter seasonals. Thus, some graders docked points if there was not clear relationship between the brew and the season. In the end, each beer's average was calculated on the GPA scale (faces counted as either an F or an N/A) and ranked accordingly. Following some quick notes will be a discussion of each individual ranking.

1. I left out any beer that can only be called a winter seasonal because it's released in the winter. For the purpose of this article, a beer is only considered a true seasonal if the it is both released around this time and is clearly marketed as such. For example, Founders Backwood Bastard and Evil Twin I Love You With My Stout are both beers that are released mid to late November but nothing about the name or flavor signify that release time. They can be released at any other season of the year and nothing would change. I mention those beers in particular because if they were included in this ranking, they would be my clear favorites by a mile. In other words, seek them out. Drink them.

2. I also only included beers from the States for no real concrete reason except "'Murica!". I know that Evil Twin is technically a Danish brewing company but they've been more or less based in Brooklyn the past few years and are a gypsy brewery anyway. My inclusion of only American beers caused the exclusion of one of my favorites, St. Bernardus Christmas. Seek it out. Drink it.

3. All beers included in this post are beers that are available to my local New York City distribution. Everything was purchased at Noble Grains, one of the best craft beer stores our great city has to offer, but can be found almost anywhere fine craft beers are sold.

And now, presented in the order we drank them, here are the 12 beers of Christmas.

Pictured: Research

Brewery: Evil Twin
Name: Christmas Eve at a New York City Hotel Room
Style: American Imperial Stout
Abv: 10.0%
My Grade: B+
Average Grade: B- (2.72)

Evil Twin beers generally have weird names and this one is certainly no exception. It presents as a simple imperial stout with mostly flavors of dark chocolate, caramel and roasted malts. The mouthfeel has good body to it and it coats the tongue and throat as it goes down. You will enjoy this if you are a fan of stouts. However, as seen from the two C grades, if you don't already like the style, this will do absolutely nothing to change your mind.


Brewery: Prairie Artisan Ales
Name: Christmas Bomb!
Style: American Imperial Stout
Abv: 11.5%
My Grade: A-
Average Grade: B (2.94) + 1 N/A

Winner of the award for best label art by a mile. I love the original Prairie Bomb! so I naturally had high expectations for this one. You can taste the base beer's chocolate and pepper but there's also a bunch of traditional winter spices mixed in. The combination of the two somehow makes this not as amazing as the base but it's still a delicious beer in it's own right. For the most part, this got rated higher than the Evil Twin stout, partly due to it's hiding a nice and strong abv. Still, the stout haters continued to hate, with one describing the taste as being chalky.


Brewery: Bell's Brewery
Name: Christmas Ale
Style: Scottish Ale
Abv: 5.5%
My Grade: B
Average Grade: B (3.08) + 1 N/A

Apricots. I get lots and lots of stone fruit flavor in this beer. It was fairly enjoyable and everybody agreed that while it wasn't outstanding, it did the job. Lost some points however for a low abv and because, as one of us pointed out, while it was good, there really wasn't anything about it that screamed winter.


Brewery: Elysian
Name: Bifrost Winter Ale
Style: Winter Warmer
Abv: 7.6%
My Grade: C
Average Grade: C (1.92) + 1 N/A

The C student of winter beers. Asian Americans would do well to stay far away from this one. It tasted like a washed down, confused IPA and was overall, kind of a mess. The only beer that we all unanimously thought was bleh.


Brewery: New Holland Brewing
Name: Cabin Fever
Style: Brown Ale
Abv: 6.5%
My Grade: B+
Average Grade: C+ (2.36) + 1 N/A

Good toasted malt flavors in a lighter body than a stout would provide. Three of us thought this was good, one thought it was not bad and one, for some reason, straight up hated it. This beer would have had a much higher average grade but was subject to this little tasting's one and only failing grade. I promise it's much better than that reviewer would have you believe, especially if you are a fan of malts.


Brewery: Southern Tier Brewing
Name: Old Man Winter Ale
Style: Old Ale
Abv: 7.0%
My Grade: B+
Average Grade: B+ (3.44) + 1 N/A

I love old ales. I love Southern Tier. This one was a no brainer for me. I was surprised to find that our committee of beer drinkers agreed across the board, with one even giving it an A. This would be an excellent beer to just come home to on a cold snowy day and drink while pensively looking out your window into the stormy skies.


Brewery: Sierra Nevada
Name: Celebration Ale
Style: American IPA
Abv: 6.8%
My Grade: A-
Average Grade: A- (3.68) + 1 N/A

Sierra Nevada's winter seasonal is one of the best beers they make, hands down. According to our survey, 4 out of 5 alcoholics highly recommend this beer; the remaining one still recommends it but not with as much enthusiasm as the others. It has that great fresh hop flavor with a bit of a malt backbone to give it a wintery kick. As an added bonus, this can pretty much be found everywhere throughout the 5 boroughs, even in your local big chain pharmacy.


Brewery: Troegs
Name: Blizzard of Hops
Style: American IPA
Abv: 6.4%
My Grade: B+
Average Grade: B+ (3.18)

At this point, 8 beers in, our 6th committee member decided to join and add a fresh, not as buzzed perspective to things. The consensus was that it tasted and drank like a lesser Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, and the grades accordingly reflect that. Still a great drink but all we're saying is if you had the choice, drink the Celebration first, while your taste buds are still optimal. Then, drink the Blizzard of Hops. But do make sure to drink both.


Brewery: Weyerbacher
Name: Winter Ale
Style: English Brown Ale
Abv: 5.6%
My Grade: B-
Average Grade: B- (2.86)

This ended up being similarly graded to the New Holland Cabin Fever, with the lowest grade once again being given by the same grader. In retrospect, that should not have been surprising, since both beers are brown ales. Despite the final average, I myself enjoyed New Holland's take on a winter brown ale much more than Weyerbacher's, as I found this version a little too thin and not very generous with the flavor. It is easy drinking but that comes with the caveat of a low abv and that's never a good thing.

Brewery: Ommegang
Name: Adoration Ale
Style: Belgian Strong Dark Ale
Abv: 10.0%
My Grade: B+
Average Grade: C+ (2.45)

Possibly the most polarizing beer of the night. This is a great beer that had the unfortunate fate of meeting a group that mostly doesn't enjoy super Belgian tasting beers. Heck, two of the group just drew faces of discontent where their grades should have been (counted as a D). Most of the complaints stemmed from a strong alcohol aftertaste and the beer being just overall too intense. I myself feel that it's a beer that goes along very well with the cold, and would recommend ordering a pint or two or five should you come across it at a bar.

Brewery: Southern Tier
Name: 2Xmas
Style: Spiced Beer
Abv: 8.0%
My Grade: A
Average Grade: B+ (3.52)

Two were left unimpressed but for the most part, the committee loved this beer. As described by the giver of the only A+ of the night, Southern Tier's 2Xmas is everything you love about the holidays in beer form. You'll get cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, dark fruit, citrus and malts with every sip. Santa's beer belly definitely comes from drinking way too much of this stuff. Yours will too.

Brewery: Troegs
Name: Mad Elf
Style: Belgian Strong Dark Ale
Abv: 11.0%
My Grade: A
Average Grade: A- (3.66) + one drunk face

Going by the average grade, Mad Elf is the clear winner of this little taste off of ours. Interesting, because while our last Belgian Strong Dark Ale had such dismal reviews, this one got gushing praise from everyone, except the one who was too many beers in to stomach its high abv. It's a smooth drink and the little bit of honey in this goes a long way into making this beer dangerously easy to binge on. If getting people drunk is your MO during this time of year, look no further for your weapon of choice. Seriously, it's 11% abv is not found anywhere at all in the flavor and it's quite delicious. Bravo, Troegs. Bravo.

Serious professionals at work

So there you have it. Through our hard work and sacrifice, you now know which beers to be on the lookout for this winter. Keep in mind that with a small sample size, one or two dissenters had the potential to really skew results, and therefore, make sure you take note of the style as well before making a decision to buy one or six of a particular bottle (buying none should never be an option). Anyways, happy holidays, happy drinking and cheers.




Next time on French Ass Restaurant:

Yup, you got it. A 2,015 word essay on why the number 5 is better than 4.