There was no ABV limit for this tasting, for obvious reasons. The end result is rather schizophrenic, but we’ll be back to tasting a single style next month (non-barrel aged imperial stout!). If it was described as being for the holidays or winter on the package, then it’s in this tasting. Ultimately, I accepted anything with holiday or winter theming, or even specific mentions of them in the beer description. That, however, would eliminate the likes of Sierra Nevada Celebration or any of the other beers featuring “snow” and “winter” themes … so we expanded the criteria. In past years, we limited it only to “Christmas” beers that specifically featured the holiday. There’s no other way to say it, so I’ll just say it: The beers in this tasting don’t make a whole lot of sense. For whatever reason, perhaps due to lack of demand, the classic Belgians in particular seem to not be arriving in our market as often as they once did.Ī Note on Beer Selection For This Tasting Others, like Scaldis Noel, we were only lucky enough to acquire on the last day of tasting. This year (and last year as well), one of those beers was the great Corsendonk Christmas Ale from Belgium, which for some reason still hasn’t arrived in the Atlanta market as I type this. Sometimes, we simply can’t get a beer that we know we should have. In the end, we’re at the mercy of press contacts and seasonal availability. Others we’re able to purchase directly because they’re available in Georgia. Most are sent in directly by the breweries when we send out a call for that style.
Like every other blind-tasting at Paste, we acquire these beers in a variety of ways. As a group of guys who are uniformly passionate about big, malty, boozy, Belgian-y beers, they look forward to this one all year round.
The Christmas/holiday beer tasting, though, is one that predates my time at Paste, and it’s the tasting that probably means the most to the people who founded this company. It’s dizzying, or maybe that’s just the booze. Over the course of 2016, I’ve probably blind-tasted nearly 1,000 beers in the name of “work” … and 247 IPAs in August alone. If I came into Paste with a pretty experienced palate, it’s now a palate that has been drilled with military or scientific rigor. And second, how much I’ve learned about tasting in the last few years. First, how fortunate we are to have an opportunity to do this. Dear lord, people.Īs these blind tastings continue to grow larger and larger, and we hear a wonderful array of feedback from both breweries and readers, I find myself reflecting on a few things. By the time the holiday season rolled around in 2015, our beer coverage and press contacts had expanded greatly, and we blind-tasted a much more robust 71. The first holiday season I was at Paste was in 2014, and we tasted 31 Christmas beers.
Also check out our Let’s Talk Beer Styles: Christmas Beers companion piece, where we dive into the history of Christmas/winter seasonal beer styles.
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