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.

We've nearly made it! My presents are wrapped and, as soon as my kid goes to sleep, they'll be placed beneath the tree. Santa's bringing someone an orange monster truck, fulfilling a Christmas wish.

The season's been hectic because, well, it always is. I'm taking a quick break before diving back into work (those cookies and milk won't consume themselves!). This evening's beer was in the advent calendar Michelle put together for me: HighGrain's Pho King Christmas Ale. Does it taste like pho? Let's see!

It's the Winter Solstice! Okay, so it was at four o'clock this morning but who cares? After this, the nights will begin growing shorter and the days longer. Tonight's a night for keeping indoors, reading and listening to music, and staying warm and comfortable against the long dark without your home. A beer certainly wouldn't go amiss.

Since it's still the holiday season, I have a Christmas ale slated for tonight: Masthead's Robot Santa's Christmas Ale (Robot Santa from here on out). How is it? Well, I've had it before so I know. This'll be a fun mystery for you!

Christmas is coming. Although we have a week to go until C-Day, it's evening now. My home's quiet and dark. My kid's nestled, all snug in his bed. Visions of sugar plums (or, at least, monster trucks) are probably dancing through his head.

I'm not yet in my cap and ready to call it a night myself. I have a beer post yet to write and some music to enjoy. I suggest you get your favorite Christmas album spinning and settle in for tonight's beer: Urban Artifact's Sugar Plum.

It's now, officially, the holiday season here on the blog, folks. December 1st has finally rolled into town, bringing with it chilly weather, yuletide cheer, and dark evenings.

I (might, depending on illnesses on the home front) have a big Chirstmassy weekend lined up: hanging lights, getting and trimming the tree, piecing together a Christmas list, a maybe a little more present shopping. 

Despite all that, I'm making time tonight to do up the first Christmas beer post of 2023. I have a small smattering of holiday brews to discuss (Anchor went under, so their Christmas Ale will, for the first year since I started blogging, not be featured as there isn't one), so we might as well get started now! To start the season off (hopefully!) right, we're settling down with some Vince Guaraldi Trio and West Side's Holiday Ale.

Let's try something. If I were to ask you to close your eyes and picture a location that you associate with Christmas, what would you conjure? The North Pole and Santa's workshop? Bethlehem and a little manger? A farm with the perfect tree hidden, just waiting to adorn your living room? A crowded auditorium where you sit beside other people watching a children's pageant? A snow-covered countryside flying by the window as your parents drive you to your relatives' to celebrate the holiday with your extended family, Christmas songs coming through on the radio?

Did I guess it? Well, regardless, I'm willing to bet (unless you're part of a select group of folks), you didn't think of Akron, OH. And I get that. There was a time that I wouldn't've, either. The city makes one of my favorite Christmas beers (which, if you catch me on the right sort of day, I just might call my favorite beer), so the city actually crosses my mind whenever I think about Christmas. 

Today, on this too-hot July day, I'm turning my attention another Christmas ale from the city, one I've never before tried: Hoppin' Frog's Frosted Frog Christmas Ale. Let's see if it'll become a new holiday classic.

Here's hoping you had a Merry Christmas! The holiday was a whirlwind for Michelle and me--the roads to and from our holiday destination were fraught with peril (due entirely to Winter Storm Elliot). Yet, we made it there and back again all the same.

Now that things are finally settling down, we're posted up at home and dealing with all the lingering pre-Christmas to-dos that are left. On this break from them, I'm taking time, at last, to get out my Christmas '22 post: Great Lakes' Barrel Aged Christmas Ale.

Another holiday season, another run of Anchor's historic Christmas Ale. I haven't missed a year since I fell into this beer rabbit hole and I'm pleased to add 2021 to my résumé.

I look forward to each annual release of the beer, but the stuff's largely been hit or miss for me. '17, '18, and '19 were all killer ales, but I just couldn't get behind last year's for some reason (I think I might have had a bad bottle, because a lot of people didn't have my particular issues with it). Let's see how '21's drinking.

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.

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.

So, I'm sick. I don't know exactly what I have--it's not a cold, it's not the flu, it's not a sinus infection. Yet, somehow, it's squarely in the middle of all of those, brining with it their worst signs and symptoms.


Whatever it is, I've been battling it since last Tuesday (this was originally planned to be a Friday night post, but we just blew right on by that, huh?). I'm still not super well, but I'd like to think I'm on the mend. That means that while I'm still coughy, sneezy, and groggy, I can taste and smell just fine.

Considering that, I think it's finally time for me to break into the next Christmas beer I've had slated to talk about. With illness no longer holding me back, here it is: Tröegs' Mad Elf.

Merry Christmas! Okay, I know Christmas was yesterday, but humor me; I was incredibly ill. But, I'm feeling better now (finally) and celebrating by nestling down with a very special ale.

You may recall exactly three years ago when I said that Thirsty Dog's 12 Dogs of Christmas was my favorite Christmas beer. Between then and now I've tried a lot of Christmas brews, only a portion of which have made it to the blog. Shockingly, 12 Dogs has remained my favorite; it's what I consider to be the pinnacle of the style, and is the beer of which I consume the most each November and December.

Tonight, I'm hoping to de-throne it. I've known that Thirsty Dog offers a Barrel Aged variant of the stuff for a while now (a place near me had, until early October this year, two giant $50 bottles of it) but I've never found it packaged in a way that was easy for me to purchase and consume. Until this year. That's right: Barrel Aged 12 Dogs of Christmas is back and in twelve-ounce bottles. I cannot wait to get my first taste of the stuff.

Anchor's Christmas Ale is something of a tradition around these parts. Don't believe me? Well, you should. See, I've had the following years on the blog: 2014 (long after the 2014 holiday season), 2015, 2016, and 2017. I'm excited to add 2018 to that list!

That's a Korean pine on the label, by the way.

This brew is one to which I always look forward. The recipe, which changes yearly, consistently makes for a good ale. I also enjoy the stroll down memory lane I take in preparation for each post by reading through those of each previous year--this gets me in a compare and contrast state of mind. It's nice to see how each year varies from those that have come before it. Last year's was my favorite yet, with a rating of 9.5/10. How will 2018 hold up? Let's find out!

This is not the post I'd intended for it to be. It's not the post I'd expect to make for the first of 2018's Christmas beer blowout, nor is it a beer that I'd imagined I'd include here. It's a beer that, until today, I had no idea existed. But, now I know better and I'm pleased to give the ale it's due here.


See, we visited my folks for Thanksgiving. On the way out of town, Michelle, my brother, my folks, and me decided to swing into Mount Vernon, OH's new (and first ever) craft brewery: Stein Brewing Company. My dad and brother each got a pint (Michelle got a pint of cider) while I opted for a flight. I'm pleased to say that each beer I had was a fine entry into the greater craft beer canon. Four of the seven I tasted, however, are each beers worth talking about: The Woodward (an IPA with habanero), Temperance Crusader (a stout with maple), Jackets Orange (a blood orange IPA), and, the beer of which I got a crowler in order to do a full post this evening, Ole Doc Neazer.

Merry Christmas in July! This is my fourth annual Christmas in July post, and it's one I look forward to every year. When I wrote the meat of this post last night (I work tonight and there's no way it was going to get done when I come home) I was listening to The Cloisters' Little Winter. If you want the full experience from reading this, I suggest you throw that on your speakers.


This year's Summer Xmas post come's all the way from Belgium's Brouwerij (or, Brewery) Corsendonk: Corsendonk Christmas Ale. When I saw it at my local bottle shop the other week, I knew I had to get it for this post. I have another beer that I initially wanted to write about for this, but I think it can age another year.

This is the fourth iteration of this ale I've touched upon with the blog. After having the 2014 Christmas Ale well after the 2014 holiday season, it's since become a staple of Christmastime around here. It's easy to write about every year (provided I can track it down) because it's always different: Anchor Brewing, the company behind the bottle at hand, creates a new recipe each and every year.


And, believe it or not, each year (or, at least, each iteration of the ale I've had) has definitely been worthy of a Yuletide spot here on the blog. This begs the question: Does this year's stack up to the previous three?