12 Beers of Christmas 2017 Reprise

Gauging by the dynamic trio of beers shown above, the time has come to dive into the 2018 edition of the 12 Beers of Christmas. And here I haven’t even recapped last year’s effort yet!

Well, that’s the way it was with 12 Beers of Christmas 2017, a roller-coaster affair afflicted and disrupted by my upper respiratory affliction. But when all was said and done my initial review of the series, of Anchor’s Our Special Ale, managed to win the year’s Best Beer Review award from the North American Guild of Beer Writers.

While very pleasing, it does set a daunting precedent and suggests that there’s nowhere to go but down. However, there’s always the compensation of actually drinking 12 more interesting beers, not to be sneezed at, especially if I can avoid another cold.

As noted in years past, the Anchor ale is the only beer that gets a repeat appearance, out of a sense of fealty for its historic importance and because it changes its recipe each year. Both the Sierra Nevada and Deschutes beers deserve a near-equal nod for their constancy and longevity and I wouldn’t want to go through the holidays without either. Their recipes are largely unchanging however, so I’ll stick with previous nods to Celebration Ale and Jubelale. (Interestingly, these meat of the order brews are all batting at about the same ABV average: Jubelale at 6.7%, Celebration at 6.8%, Anchor’s at 6.9%.)

Jubelale does change its label each year, calling on the creative skills of artists local to the brewery’s Bend, Oregon headquarters. This year the owners of the employee-owned brewery did the artwork themselves at an outdoor 30th anniversary celebration, armed with brushes, paint water guns, paint-filled water balloons and paint-smeared clothes and limbs to create an abstract expressionist work Pollack might have envied.

But, to recap 2017, the 12 beers tried brought the total over the last six years to 72, all linked to below. It was a pretty good crop all in all, despite one gusher (Saison Saint Médard Cuvée de Noël) and one unknowingly purchased AB product (sacrilege!), the Birra del Borgo 25 Dodici.

Eight of the beers were at or over 8% ABV, raising the average to 7.7%. The outliers were the Rogue Yellow Snow Pilsner at the 5.5% low end and the Port Brewing Santa’s Little Helper, not so little, at the 9.9% high end.

I don’t need high ABVs to appreciate a beer, but it stands to reason that high-octane offerings will have greater depth and complexity that, if all the elements are working together well, will result in a memorable beer. That was certainly the case with the Port Brewing beer and Lost Abbey’s Gnoel de Abbey (8.5%).

There was also the delightful one-off of the Game of Thrones Winter Is Here entry from Ommegang. And the pleasant surprise of the Upslope Christmas Ale, the one beer I requested from a brewer last year. As it turned out, it was my favorite. As with Christmas itself, there’s a lot of serendipity at work.

The grand roundup:

The 12 Beers of Christmas

2017