Drinking Holiday Beer with Mr. Beer Santa
Winter Beers aren’t really my favorite category — Winter Warmers, Christmas Beers, whatever you call them, they can be overspiced, cloying, and just plain weird when you get the wrong combination of ingredients together. Unfortunately for me, my birthday falls in the heart of Christmas Beer season, and since birthdays are the time when you get together and make people buy you beers, I usually end up drinking a lot of them. Fortunately for me, my friends are mostly beer geeks, and I spent my birthday at Spuyten Duyvil, not some shithole bar with no choices, so all of the christmas beers I drank that night were awesome.
The Sturdy Brewers from De Struise went for it with their Winter Beer and called it “Jesus.” Sure, it’s actually Tsjeeses and is in Dutch, and has another meaning, but for me, it’s Jesus beer. Like the other beers I’ve tried from De Struise, J-word presents an extremely complex package of flavor and aroma. It pours a cloudy, thick yellowish/amber color, and smells positively heavenly as soon as you bring it to your grill. I smelled oxidized sherry flavors, white wine and grapes, spicy, and sweetness. Tasting it was a similar experience, with the characteristic malty Struise flavor, mixed in with ground spices and intense malt sweetness. A bit of bitterness keeps this balanced for the most part, but it’s intense. Worthy of the name for sure, and a hell of a way to keep warm in frozen NYC.
Fantome’s “Noel” beer is one of the few I haven’t had the chance to try that I know about, and I’m pretty sure I drank a fresh bottle, though I’m not sure. It had a smoky, black appearance, and a smoky black taste. A Dark Saison is a rare treat, and since Saisons are all that Fantome brews, that’s what we have. Brewer and artisan Prignon likes to tuck special ingredients into his seasonal brews, and with this once I got lots of dry malt sweetness, the classic Fantome barnyard action, and a big hit of smokey chocolate. Nice. A Stout by way of Belgian Farmhouse un-Orthodoxy? Another wonderful Fantome creation and a great experience — a really wonderful bottle.
The Norweigan brewery Nøgne Ø’s Peculiar Yule rounded out the trio of Darkness that I entered into on my birthday night, and it definitely packed a hell of a wallop. The first, second, and last thing you notice about this beer is the crazy amount of ginger on the nose and on the pallette. Inbetween there is a rainbow of dark malt, deep fruit, and a nice hit of bitterness as well. Normally I wouldn’t be so craazy about such a spicy beer but this really hit the spot — it was dry enough, weird enough, and drinkable enough that I could really get into it.
Spuyten Duyvil did a public service by highlighting so many excellet Winter Beers (and giving me a great reason to take a year off from drinking them), and as usual I was rewarded for trying things I “wouldn’t normally” drink. I drank a lot of beer on my birthday night/weekend/week — more to come from the “first of 09″ selections.
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