Winter Beers
If you drink your beer seasonally, you will notice that certain beer styles only come around at specific times of the year. Especially here in Texas, lighter low abv beers tend to come out more in the heat of summer to quench the thirst from any outdoor activity. But in the cooler winter months, beers tend to be darker and higher abv. This comes from a much older tradition of keeping warm during the winter, well before the invention of central heating. “Wassailing” is an English tradition where people drink hot spiced ale to stay warm during the winter months. It typically contained spices such as nutmeg, ginger, and lemon, and even more odd ingredients like raw eggs, roasted apples, and even floating toast. This is actually where we get the term “to toast” someone, as wassailing was also usually associated with a salutation to good health or fortune.
And it’s not just the English who have all the fun of winter ales. Belgian and French breweries also make Bières de Noël (literally “Christmas Beer”), in which they add similar winter spices to higher abv dark beers. This adds further complexity to the already spicy clove-like phenols from the traditional Belgian yeast character.
The majority of these darker, heavier beers (sometimes referred to as Winter Warmers) can be a variety of existing styles like Barleywines and Strong Ales, or some concoction of their own spiced with a variety of ingredients. They usually have a similar flavor profile of toffee, dark fruits like raisins and plums, and are even reminiscent of winter-time desserts like fruit cake and bread pudding.
In the same vein as our European brethren, we have also created a few winter-spiced beers ourselves. Our first beer is ‘Spice Queen.’ The base beer is a 9.7% abv Doppelbock with semi-sweet notes of dark fruit, caramel, and biscuit, and then we added cinnamon, star anise, and clove to give it a well-rounded and complex spice component. Despite this beer being a lager instead of an ale, it is fairly similar to what is typically drunk around wintertime. Our other beer was definitely nothing of the sort. ‘Keepin’ It Real for the Holidays with Chef’ is a 10.7% Golden Strong Ale brewed with Little Debbie Christmas Tree cakes and lactose. This incredibly sweet beer surprisingly takes on a lot of character from the cakes themselves, and the added lactose adds back some of the sweetness, as the simple sugars from the cakes are mostly fermented away.
Come on by before these beers are gone and do some wassailing of your own. And you can leave out the raw eggs if you want!
Author: Collin Zreet
Collin Zreet is a native Texan and is a founding member and co-owner of Funky Picnic Brewery and Café. He is a Certified Cicerone and Certified BJCP Beer Judge, specializing in beer and food pairings. When he is not thinking about beer, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Taylor, and dog, Rocco.