Boxing Day calls for an English beer, and our sole international entry this year fits the bill perfectly. A barleywine from the esteemed Harvey’s & Sons in East Sussex is my favorite on the list so far this year.
Boxing Day doesn’t mean much here in the colonies, but in England it’s an official holiday, and back in more class-oriented times a way for the upper classes to salve their consciences by not only giving the downstairs staff the day off (after working like stevedores on Christmas), along with boxes of gifts and the slightly less festive leftovers from the previous night’s dinner table.
Maybe that’s judgmental. Our leftovers tonight were still pretty festive, and the beer from Harvey’s, as it’s more colloquially known, a wonderful precursor. Barleywines usually range from 8 to 12% ABV, so this one is on the mild side at 7.5%. But it’s still a sturdy sip, loaded with biscuity caramel aromas, suggestions of fruit and a pleasingly coating mouthfee. There’s no spice here, but there is the suggestion of it in a perfectly balanced hop bite at the finish.
It’s also a gorgeous looking brew, superbly clear, a simmering, ruby-colored beauty. All five of us who tried it liked it. I loved it. Lilah said it was her favorite, Abby’s second favorite after the Hardywood Gingerbread Stout.
I started the 12 Beers of Christmas back in 2012. The granddaughters were too young to drink then, if not to young to make it into a post, one about Delirium Noel. Here they are then, holding onto their Furbies, a Christmas present that had a half-life of enjoyment of about a half-hour. Or less.:
Here they are now, of legal drinking age, holding onto bottles of Harvey’s Christmas Ale:
Brewing by the Harvey family dates back to the 1820s. The brewery is still independent, now into the eighth generation of family involvement, and housed in a classic Victorian structure sometimes referred to as the Lewes’ Cathedral. The Christmas Ale is actually blessed there each year. It’s been around since 1972, a spin-off by then head brewer Anthony Jenner from his Elizabethan Ale, brewed for Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953. That’s also a barleywine, which undergoes a secondary fermentation with a wine yeast.
Anthony’s son, Miles Jenner, is now the current Head Brewer and Joint Managing Director at Harvey’s. He took his father’s Christmas Ale recipe and tweaked it to include roasted malt, pinhead oats and different varieties of local hops.
The beer has won some 30 awards over the years, including one from Finland called the Olutseura Olviretki award, for perfectly capturing the requirements of “The Christmas Beer Regulation,” which suggests such beers needed to be strong, dark red, and causing a “slight dizziness” in the brain. The regulation appears somewhere in the novel Seven Brothers by Aleksis Kivi. Maybe I should suggest it to my book group. But in any case, with an agreeable slight dizziness in my brain, the award seems perfectly apt.
Name: Christmas Ale
Brewer: Harvey’s Brewery, Lewes, England
Style: Barleywine
ABV: 7.5%
Availability: Usually available year-round, imported to the U.S. by B. United
For More Information: www.harveys.org.uk
[December 26, 2024]
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