Sixpack Sez

Nov. 30, 2007 | Great holiday brews, for just a few weeks

WHEN YOU TAKE a look at the shelves at your favorite beer store each December, it's hard to imagine that just 30 years ago, Christmas beer was almost unheard of in America. No spiced ales, no decorated bottles, no Noel.

The aisles at grocery stores and distributors were dominated by everyday lagers from giants like Anheuser-Busch and Schlitz, whose only nod toward the holidays was a stack of cartons decorated with red-and-green crepe paper. A few small breweries occasionally packaged special beers for Christmas, but they were rare, with very limited distribution.

Today, area beer stores carry no fewer than 100 different festive holiday beers - winter warmers, Christmas beers, even a bottle for Hanukkah. Nearly every brewpub makes one, too. The beers are available for just a few short weeks, from early November to just after New Year's Day. And they come from all over the world - not just American microbreweries, but from Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, Austria, Norway, Denmark and more.

How did our stockings fill up with so much great beer?

Well, the holiday beer tradition is quite old - reaching back to before Christianity, when farmers and brewers made special ales for winter festivals. And while some regions, notably Scandinavia, never lost their Christmas beer, the tradition never took hold in America.

Until 1975.

That was the year Fritz Maytag, the washing machine scion who kicked off the microbrewing boom with San Francisco's Anchor Brewing, invented Our Special Ale.

"I was aware of the tradition in medieval villages where they would make special beers for various festival days," Maytag said. "You'd have beers brewed for weddings, festivals and other celebrations. And certainly you'd brew them for Christmas."

It made sense that this small brewery that had revived itself using Old World beer-making techniques would rediscover the tradition of holiday beer. Only problem: Maytag didn't have a clue of what it should taste like.

"The only holiday beers that I was aware of was one from John Koch's brewery in Dunkirk, New York, and Noche Buena [Holy Night] from Mexico," he said. The former was a typical bland 1950s lager, the latter was an amber Vienna-style lager, and neither provided much inspiration.

"We knew we wanted to do something special, so we just decided, let's do an English ale," he said. It would be an all-malt brown ale with Cascades hops added during the later stages of fermentation, a process known as dry-hopping.

Anchor Our Special Ale was an immediate success. But Maytag wasn't satisfied. Over the years, he'd tinker with the recipe. Starting in 1987, he started adding different spices every year.

By the late '80s, other breweries - especially in the West - noticed and began making their own versions: Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, Coors Winterfest, Widmer Festbier, Grant's Winter Ale, Winterhook Christmas Ale. Then Merchant du Vin, the Seattle specialty beer importer, had England's Samuel Smith brewery make its Winter Welcome for the American market, prompting a flood of Christmas imports.

The selection has grown every year since.

I still pick up at least a bottle of Our Special Ale every year, and it never disappoints. The spices in this year's version seem a bit more assertive, especially as it warms in the glass. Cinnamon? Nutmeg? Spruce?

"We've never told anyone what's in our Christmas ale!" Maytag told me. "It's nice to have a secret."

How about cloves?

"No! That's the only thing I'm going to say. There are no cloves in it! There are no cloves, none. I'm tired of hearing about cloves!"

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The list of Christmas beer continues to grow. Here are a few newcomers I came across in local takeout shops.

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, Belgium. Malty and reminiscent of one of my all-time favorites, Affligem Noel.

Magic Hat Odd Notion, Vermont. A smooth, chocolatelike dark wheat ale.

Otter Creek Winter Ale, Vermont. A brown ale with raspberry flavoring.

Saranac Winter Wassail, New York. Spiced (cinnamon, nutmeg, orange) English ale.

Christmas in Belgium five pack. A nice boxed set from Shelton Bros. (under $30), including Kerkom Winterkoninkske, De Ranke Pere Noel, Zinnebir X-mas, Serafijn Christmas Angel and Kerstmutske Christmas Nightcap.

Port Brewing Santa's Little Helper, California. A/K/A Santa's Little Hangover, this is the one everybody's been talking about this winter: an imperial stout (10.5 percent alcohol) from cult brewer Tomme Arthur.