Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

  • Home
  • About
  • Editorial
  • Birthdays
  • Art & Beer

Socialize

  • Dribbble
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Powered by Genesis

You are here: Home / Beers / Home For The Holidays Session

Home For The Holidays Session

November 19, 2015 By Jay Brooks

session-the
For our 106th Session next month our host will be yours truly, who writes this here Brookston Beer Bulletin. For my topic, I’ve chosen Holiday Beers, by which I mean this.

For seasonal beers, the Solstice/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Mithra time of the year is my mostest favorite. This past weekend, we had our fifteenth annual holiday beer tasting for the Celebrator Beer News, and sampled 42 of this year’s Christmas beers. Here’s how I’ve described them in the introduction of the tasting notes for the holiday edition each year:

Holiday beers are by design no one style, but are a chance for individual breweries to let their talent and imagination run wild. At the holidays, when people stop their busy lives and share some precious time with family and friends, the beer they choose should be equally as special as the time they’re sharing. So a holiday beer should be made to impress, to wow its audience, to stand out. That’s the only criteria that should be met by one of these beers. Will it impress? Different breweries, thankfully, do this in many, many different ways. Some use unusual spices or fruits, some use special malts or hops, some use other uncommon ingredients like spruce or rye, and some make a style that itself is unusual. So there’s nothing to tie these beers together apart from their celebration of the season. That makes it both a delight and a challenge to judge. Ultimately, perhaps more than any other tasting, these beers are simply a matter of what you like and our judging is a matter of what we like. So try them and discover for yourself the many flavors of this holiday season.

Beer and hat of Santa Claus

As I said, I really enjoy the variety of holiday and winter seasonals, and they often seem especially well-suited to colder weather. I don’t really care what they’re Celebrating, be it:

Christmas
Miller-xmas-beer-1

Xmas
Xmas-Brew

Chanukah
CHAN2015_TAP

Winter Solstice
AVBC-winter-solstice

Krampus
krampus

Festivus
full-pint-festivus

And despite the fact that the rightwing nutjobs insist there’s a war on Christmas because people use “holidays” to be inclusive instead of “Merry Christmas,” a lot of seasonal beer labels from the first half of the 20th century used “holiday” rather than Christmas. And what do you know, civilization didn’t end. And that’s usually the time that conservatives point to as being what we need to return to, when America was a more innocent place, pre-1960s. But they drank holiday beers, what do you know? And as far as I can tell, nobody freaked the fuck out like they do today. After the brouhaha with Starbucks cups, it actually made me want to go to Starbucks — a place I don’t normally frequent — just because of how ridiculous it all was.


Potsoi-holiday-brewing Armanetti-holiday-beer
Kellers-holiday-beer Peoples-holiday-beer
Chief-Oshkosh-holiday-brew-tree E-and-B-holiday-brew-label-2
Special-Holiday-Beer-Labels-The-Peoples-Brewing Holiday-Special-Beer-Labels-Remmler-Brewing
Walters-Holiday-Beer-Labels-Walter-Brewing Kochs-Holiday-Beer--Labels-Fred-Koch-Brewery
holiday-brew-label Christmas-Brew-Beer-Labels-Auto-City-Brewing

So for this Session, write about whatever makes you happy, so long as it involves holiday beers.

  • Discuss your favorite holiday beer.
  • Review one or more holiday beers.
  • Do you like the idea of seasonal beers, or loathe them?
  • What’s your idea of the perfect holiday beer?
  • Do have a holiday tradition with beer?
  • Are holiday beers released too early, or when should they be released?
  • Do you like holiday beer festivals?

Those are just a few suggestions, celebrate the holiday beers in your own way. Happy Holidays!

So start your holiday celebration early. It’s never too soon. To participate in the December Session, on or around Friday, December 4, write your post, then leave a comment below or shoot me an e-mail or copy me (@Brookston) in your Twitter feed with your link.

christmas-beer-coaster

Filed Under: Beers, Just For Fun, The Session Tagged With: Announcements, Holidays



Comments

  1. Scott B says

    November 19, 2015 at 4:52 pm

    Don’t forget Festivus! Doesn’t Triple Rock have a Festivus beer?

    • Jay Brooks says

      November 20, 2015 at 8:43 am

      OMG, who could I have forgotten Festivus? That’s corrected now, thanks for the reminder.

  2. The Beer Nut says

    December 4, 2015 at 1:13 am

    Here’s my contribution. Cheers Jay!

  3. Thomas Cizauskas says

    December 4, 2015 at 7:02 am

    Nothing profound from me today. (War on Christmas? Bah! Humbug!) Just a beer that ‘makes me happy.’ Thanks for hosting, Jay, and Merry Solstice/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Mithra/Festivus.

    http://www.yoursforgoodfermentables.com/2015/12/the-session-beer-blogging-friday-106.html

  4. Gary Gillman says

    December 4, 2015 at 7:08 am

    Here is my contribution, Jay:

    http://www.beeretseq.com/the-session-looks-at-a-holiday-or-christmas-tradition-in-beer/

    Thanks for keeping the Session going.

    Gary

  5. Sean Inman says

    December 4, 2015 at 10:02 am

    Thanks for closing out the year! Here is my contribution: http://www.beersearchparty.com/the-session-106-its-christmastime/

  6. Derrick says

    December 4, 2015 at 1:39 pm

    My post is up here:

    http://beer-runner.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-session-106-anchor-brewings-mark.html

    Thanks for hosting! Cheers!

  7. Tom Bedell says

    December 4, 2015 at 10:42 pm

    Here’s mine, Jay: http://theaposition.com/tombedell/golf/lifestyle/6306/the-session-106-holiday-beers

    Have a grand holiday with plenty of suitable brews.

    Cheers,

    Tom

  8. Alan says

    December 5, 2015 at 9:07 am

    Thanks for hosting, Toastmaster General! http://beerblog.genx40.com/archive/2015/december/session106

  9. Brett Domue says

    December 5, 2015 at 11:21 am

    Yesterday I stocked up on Belgian Christmas beers for my Beer Advent calendar. Here’s my post for The Session 106 using a Christmas Beer from Andorra.

  10. Jon Abernathy says

    December 5, 2015 at 8:25 pm

    Hi Jay,

    Thanks for hosting! I’m behind on my notification but my post is here:
    http://www.thebrewsite.com/the-session-106-holiday-beers/

    Cheers!

  11. Joan Birraire says

    December 9, 2015 at 12:45 am

    Here’s my contribution: The Session #106 – Holiday Beers

    Cheers Jay, thanks for hosting!

Find Something

Northern California Breweries

Please consider purchasing my latest book, California Breweries North, available from Amazon, or ask for it at your local bookstore.

Recent Comments

  • Return of the Session – Beer Search Party on The Sessions
  • Scoats on Beer Birthday: Scoats
  • You're Not From Around Here - Food GPS on The Sessions
  • Mark Smith on Beer In Ads #4778: Rheingold Can Quench A Dragon’s Thirst
  • Getting Ready to Celebrate St Patrick’s Day – The Blessing of Beer | Red Panda News on Beer Saints

Recent Posts

  • Beer Birthday: John Martin May 14, 2025
  • Beer In Ads #4968: Bock Beer At The Owl May 13, 2025
  • Historic Beer Birthday: True W. Jones May 13, 2025
  • Historic Beer Birthday: Jacob Adams May 13, 2025
  • Beer Birthday: Eric Warner May 13, 2025

BBB Archives

Go to mobile version