Library: SACTEXT 1984-1989 Record ID: 356861


Content Date 12/10/89 
Day SUN 
Section SCENE 
Page No D8 
Edition METRO FINAL 
Memo  
Corrections  
Origin Ed Murrieta Bee Staff Writer 
Dateline  
Headline ROLL OUT THE BARRELS
CHEERS TO WINTER BEERS, MADE FOR SIPPING IN FRONT OF THE HEARTH 
Body Text WHO EVER HEARD of decking the halls with a six-pack? Mulled wine, perhaps, but beer for Christmas?

"We've done other seasonal beers and we wanted to do something special for Christmas," said James Koch, president and brewmaster of the Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams beer and this year introduced Samuel Adams Winter Lager for the holidays. "It was something to do for a special time of the year."

Well, if this is what's meant by holiday cheer, then merry Christmas to you and your wassail, too.

Samuel Adams is the newest addition to a fine host of beers, lagers and ales brewed specifically for the Christmas season. These aren't just beers with fancy Christmas packaging. Christmas beer means a beer as special as the holiday itself, a little bit of wintertime, malted, hopped and bottled. Such beers are brewed just for the holiday season and are generally darker in color, and have a richer, more robust flavor.

"In the winter, you can appreciate a little heavier, more flavorful product than on a hot summer day," said Ken Grossman, co-owner and master brewer of the Chico-based Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., which introduced its Celebration Ale six years ago. "It's basically a gift from the brewery to the public."

The brewing of special holiday beers, ales and lagers is a centuries-old tradition that began in Europe. Traditionally, special batches were made in small quantities just before Christmas.

In the United States the brewing of special holiday beers is a relatively reborn tradition. Early American breweries carried on the tradition founded in the Old Country, but by the early '20s those breweries - and their holiday beers - went under, victims of Prohibition. Until the mid-'70s, the closest thing to holiday cheer came when breweries packaged their regular products in holiday wrappings and labels.

The Anchor Brewery of San Francisco, which produces Anchor Steam, revived the holiday beer tradition in 1975 with the introduction of Our Special Ale, a beer made with the thought of producing a dark, rich and flavorful brew in limited amounts - exactly the way it had been done in Europe for centuries.

"I think we kind of reinvented it," Fritz Maytag, Anchor president and brewmaster, said of the holiday beer tradition. "The idea that we would actually start from scratch and create a flavorful, wintery brew that we would sell for just a short time was quite unheard of, actually."

Other holiday beers available are: St. Stan's Fest Bier by the Stanislaus Brewing Company of Modesto; Grant's Spiced Ale by the Yakima Brewing Company of Yakima, Wash.; Winterfest by Coors. Christmas beers by Young's, Aass and Sapporo are on the market but are harder to find.

Most of the beers are available at major liquor stores - Liquor Barn or Liquor Mart - or larger supermarkets such as Lucky, Bel Air or Raley's, but the best bets are specialty markets such as Corti Brothers, DeFazio's, David Berkley and the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op.

Two local brew pubs, the Hogshead in Old Sacramento and the Rubicon in midtown, have made special batches for Christmas. The Rubicon has brewed a spiced porter ale that's available at the brewery/restaurant or to go by the gallon. The Hogshead's Christmas beer, a dark bock lager, will be on tap beginning a week before Christmas, Hogshead brewmaster Phil Salmon said.

McCormick Beverage Co., a West Sacramento distributor that carries many of the holiday beers, offers public tastings of Christmas beers by appointment.

IN THE UNITED STATES, holiday beers are mostly made by smaller breweries known as "micro-breweries." Their size and limited productions allow them to experiment and produce different types of beers and lagers throughout the year.

"We're willing to make special beers in smaller batches," Koch said. Anheuser-Busch really can't turn the brewery on and off to make 20,000 cases. One line at Anheuser-Busch turns out 20,000 cases in eight hours. They're not interested in messing up a mass-production brewery to make one batch of special beer."

Coors, though, was willing. The Golden, Colo.-based brewery introduced its Winterfest beer in 1986 in Colorado only.

"It was really set up as kind of a special gift to our home state," Coors spokeswoman Theresa Donnelly said. "We sold out in four weeks. It was incredible.

"From our point of view, holiday beers have been a real part of the Coors family tradition," Donnelly said. "It goes back to when Adolph was running the shop here 100 years ago. They were playing with a holiday beer for family and close customers."

Holiday beers have grown in popularity in recent years. Most brewers say it's the change to a more sophisticated beer taste in this country. Heavier, darker and more flavorful beers have been more in demand, and, in turn, the popularity of holiday beers has soared.

"People are really catching on," Koch said. "And you're dealing with 1 percent of the population who really care about the quality of the beer they are drinking. We didn't have any trouble selling every drop of this year's batch. That wouldn't have happened four years ago."

The micro-breweries deliberately keep production of their holiday brews low. A run of 1,800 barrels (or 20,000 cases) is common for the seasonal beers. The beers are shipped to stores just before or just after Thanksgiving and usually are sold out by Christmas.

"Those are good amounts," Koch said. "A couple of years ago I don't think any small breweries would have dared make that much. Some of the more appreciative, knowledgeable beer drinkers have gotten used to the beers for Christmas. It's just a sign of the advancing awareness of American beer drinkers."

Sierra Nevada made its first batch of Celebration Ale six years ago, and the beer was an instant hit.

"Our first year was one of our best ever and we made only 100 cases," Sierra Nevada's Grossman said. "The next year we went up tenfold, and now we're up to 20,000 cases. We could sell more if we could produce it, but we're still limited by our small size."

SOME BREWERIES are also deliberate in their recipes. Anchor, for example, changes its formula from year to year. "We purposely make it different every year," Maytag said. "We have fun with it."

This year Maytag brewed Our Special Ale as a spiced ale. Though Our Special Ale has been a spiced ale for the past two Christmas seasons, Maytag says this year's batch is different still - but how different he won't say. And he won't even say what spices are included, though most spiced ales have dashes of nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger.

"That's part of the fun for us - it's a secret," Maytag said. "Many people have tried to guess. It's completely natural, a very subtle spiciness."

Experimentation poses no problems - other than coming up with a good recipe. The hard part, brewers say, is when they keep the same recipe year to year.

"The toughest part is trying to make it consistent from year to year because you're serving something that you're not making every day of the week," said Darren Waytuck, a brewer for the Yakima Brewing and Malting Co. in Yakima, Wash., which produces Grant's Spiced Ale for the holidays.

The holiday beers have a higher alcohol content - from 4.5 percent to 6.5 percent by volume - than regular beers, which typically run from 3.2 percent to 4.5 percent. Even the Winterfest by Coors, which normally brews a fairly weak beer, packs a wallop.

"You wouldn't want to chug a six-pack of our Winter Lager," Koch of Samuel Adams said. "It's more of a sipping beer. Not only will winter beers stand up to food, they darn well may be a substitute for food. They're a meal in themselves." 
Graphic Text Bee/Mitch Toll
Holiday beers - heavier, darker, more flavorful - have become more popular in recent years, reflecting a more sophisticated beer taste in the nation. 
Keywords HOLIDAY; ALCOHOL