Ho ho ho! I hope your day's been great and that Santa was good to you. We're winding down after our seasonal festivities. The kids are playing with their new toys and, when I have time for them, there are a few video games calling my name. Before then, though, let's have some beer.

After my December went completely sideways, I found I only had time for one Christmas beer post. That's what we're up to this evening: Sun King's Electric Reindeer.

Since I missed July 25th (Michelle and I were in the hospital after the early birth of our second kid), let's get to that beer now. Merry Christmas in August! I've never done Christmas in August before and don't anticipate from deviating from July in the future; let's enjoy this as a fun little one-off thing.

Today we're breaking into a bottle I nabbed from store shelves in January, just before it disappeared. It's De Dolle Brouwers' Stille Nacht. That's right, a heavy Belgian Christmas ale. Luckily, it's a little cooler today than it was a month ago, so I'm more prone to drink a beer of this caliber.

It's Christmas! Okay, it's after Christmas. My week didn't go quite as planned but that's fine. I spent more time with my family, which means I had more fun than I'd anticipated.

How was your Christmas? Did Santa bring you what you wanted? Or, was your stocking filled with coal and fish heads?

I'm here at home now after a whirlwind near-week away. My tree's lit and I'm bundled up and snuggled under a blanket. Today's beer marks the end of the holiday season for me. So, with a grateful prayer and a thankful heart let's to it: Tröegs' The Mad Elf Grand Cru.

Well, that was a whirlwind. How was your Christmas? Mine (if you can't tell) got away from me a little. But hey, what's Christmas around here without a late post? And, for this post, I have a little something.

That little something is nothing else than Victory Brewing Company's Merry Monkey, the first beer I've ever had from this prolific brewery. Let's see if it's as Santa's little helpery as I'm hoping it is (we're in the midst of our second Christmas right now).

It's nearly Christmas now. My child's nestled, all snug (for this exact moment) in his bassinet. He has no idea that Santa's coming tonight to leave presents for us to open with him tomorrow.

It's that time again for what's become a yearly tradition here on the blog. See, for the uninitiated, San Francisco, CA's Anchor Brewing does a special beer each year for Christmas. Each annual label bears a different hand-drawn tree each year the beer boasts a new secret recipe. This goes back to the first Anchor Christmas Ale, in 1975.

Since 2015 (when I drank the 2014 Christmas Ale out of season), each new variant of Christmas Ale's been around the blog. Some I liked more than others. Let's see how 2022 stacks up to the rest.

It was sometime in late October when I pulled into the driveway from a trip to the bottleshop. I burst through the door, my spoils in hand. I called to Michelle from the kitchen: "Jackie O's has a Christmas beer!" 

I knew then that this would be the first Christmas beer I'd visit this year. I have a pretty sparse December ahead of me: This is the first of four Christmas posts, with two of these being my traditional one-two punch for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I've consumed a lot of Christmas beers over the years. Let's see how well Jackie O's can play into this varied style.

This has been an absolute whirlwind of a summer and I've been torn pretty damn asunder by it. Luckily, today's about tradition. It's July 25th. That means one thing: Christmas in July!

I have something special for you today: The 2021 variant of the Bruery's 2 Turtle Doves. This dropped late in the holiday season last year and, against whatever odds might have been stacked against me, I managed to track a single bottle of it down before it sold out. Now, it's time to pop it open and see how Christmassy I can make the rest of the day.

I've never had anything from St. Bernardus before. 

I know, I know. They're a famous brewery and their Christmas Ale is what a good chunk of Europe seems to view as the definitive Christmas beer. I've always associated winter warmer ale styles with Christmas, but, because it's the jolliest day of the year, let's give St. Bernardus Christmas Ale a go.

Before we get into the blog's first proper Christmas post for the year, allow me to direct you here, to Jenny Oaks Baker's rendition of "Ding Dong Merrily on High," a track I only just discovered last night. I don't think there's a better song with which I can welcome this first Christmas beer.

The beer is Sam Adams' Old Fezziwig. While I have problems with how it's sold (we'll get into that in a bit), I'm thrilled to finally be doing up a proper post on the ale.

Here we are, suddenly, on the other end of Christmas. Did you have a good one? Were you able to see your family, either safely-distanced in person or through some video chatting service? Was Santa kind to you? Regardless of how you spent the day (or if you celebrate it), I hope you had some fun. I hope that you got something nice, even/especially if you gave it to yourself.

Me? I had a good Christmas. I gave a lot of really great presents and got some of the best gifts I've ever received. It was a fun day, and I'm excited to settle in with tonight's beer, the final beer of the holiday season and the last one I'll be doing up on the blog in 2020. This beer took me by surprise--I found it by sheer luck in a local bottleshop. I didn't know it was releasing, nor did I know it even existed.

Can you believe that Christmas is tomorrow? Seriously. Christmas--it's tomorrow. I still can't quite wrap my head around that. This year's been awful. Regardless, the holiday season's been good to me. Were I one to sit and count my blessings, I'd have a lot to be thankful for. 

Today I'm celebrating that with the oldest beer I've featured on the blog. This bottle's eight years old (that's as old as Purrl!). It's a Belgian Christmas beer (imported from Belgium by Shelton Brothers, Inc.). I have every reason to suspect that this'll be a decadent treat. Ho ho ho here we go.

Today's beer is another special treat for me--it's the second of two Christmas beers I wasn't sure I'd be able to track down. See, New Holland announced their third Brewer's Best series beer in early November. That beer is Holiday Ale. While you could preorder it for local pickup, there was no mention of any distribution.

Two weeks ago, after failing to find the ale at a local bottleshop, I hopped on the brewery's beer locator and saw that the beer was nonexistent in my neck of the woods. I shrugged and cut my losses--I figured I had enough beers for the blog's holiday season.

All this to say that I was shocked when I found the beer at that exact same bottleshop last Friday. I grabbed a four-pack and headed directly for the checkout with it. Now, four days later, I'm ready to crack into a can. Here we go: New Holland's Holiday Ale.

Today we have a treat: This is the priciest beer I'm consuming this holiday season. The 12 ounce bottle I'm about to break into ran me $6.39. It's a BBA version of Bell's Christmas Ale, which I drank and wrote about here (that's the new recipe that Bell's uses by the way, which they're still holding strong to here in 2020).

I won't lie to you--I was ecstatic when I found a single bottle of this being sold. This is one of two beers I'm doing this season that I didn't think I'd be able to find, so stumbling across this bottle in the wild was exciting. Let's get to it: Bell's Old Fashioned Holiday.

Are we seriously at the second Christmas beer of 2020? Yep, strange as that is. This year's really sprinted right passed my ability to comprehend the flow of time.

It's the Holiday Season! This post would have typically gone up the day after Thanksgiving (which is when the blog's Christmas beer time officially commences), but it's been a zany long weekend: Eating food, yeah, but a ton of house work (plumbing stuff and furnace fixing, namely). Today, however, Michelle and I got our Christmas tree trimmed, put up, and decorated. I hung our outside lights while she set out interior decorations out. So, finally, I'm ready to start the blog's Christmas season.

The first post of this year is a beer that I look forward to annually, one that changes its recipe each and every year but is of a consistently high quality. That beer, as you can easily tell by the title, is Anchor's 2020 Christmas Ale.

That beer, if the above image and title of this post didn't give it away, is Brewery Huyghe's Delirium Noël. It's all foil-wrapped painted glass adorned with a Santa hat-wearing, ice-skating pink elephant. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited for it!

Each year I look forward to a very specific beer here on the blog. That beer sees an annual release, but the recipe is never the same. I started drinking this stuff with the 2014 offering and now, five iterations of it later, here we are with 2019. I'll not mince words with the intro--it's probably best to get into it. Today's beer is Anchor's 2019 Christmas Ale.

It was nice and sunny for the first part of the day. We took Lottie for a walk then to see/get her picture taken with Santa. Now she's sleepy and snuggled up as the clouds roll in--it's about to snow heavily here all night.


I'd be lying if I didn't say I was excited for it. The lights around our Christmas tree are glowing, a candle's burning on our coffee table, and we have plenty of wood for a fire in our stove tonight. We're pretty well set to enjoy the snow while it lasts. The only thing that could make all this preparation more perfect is a Christmas beer. That's where Three Floyds' Alpha Klaus comes into play.