Kmflett's Blog

Christmas Beers (Part One) A brief recent social history

Back in the day (before 2000 shall we say)Christmas Beers existed but were not a major feature of the festive season. A quick Google in 2025 will now provide innumerable answers focused on Christmas beer cases and so on. If you are someone- like me- who get emails from breweries you will currently be getting quite a few each day.

More seriously there are people who know and write about beers who can suggest some seriously good Christmas beers. Phil Mellows has produced a list in the I Paper and Pete Brown in the Sunday Times. Most of these are something to order for delivery (not the best time of year for that!) but looking at both those lists there is one (Orkney) on the Wetherspoons Christmas ales list and one (Greene King/Morland) that can be found in supermarkets.

As the Fletts originally come from Orkney I sought out the Clootie Dumpling, recommended by Pete Brown to accompany figgy pudding. That wasn’t available but it was a drinkable seasonal cask beer. Spiced but balanced in the sense that it could be consumed as a pint rather than sipped. Indeed CAMRA classify it as a session bitter that goes with cheese. It is definitely highly seasonal brewed in December/January and since Orkney Brewery dates back to 1988 it is another excellent but quite recently invented festive drinking tradition

Depending on where you live or work or travel to regional and local breweries may well be producing a seasonal winter ale if not specifically a Christmas one. CAMRA’s Pigs Ear Beer Festival in Hackney last week had lots. Often dark beers, sometimes barrel aged and frequently quite strong. That is a third of a pint…

The Spoons 12 Ales of Christmas has been running for some years and if you want to find a festive beer on cask it’s the most reliable place to do so. The nature of those beers is changing. Perhaps even five years ago I would rarely drink them. They were beers with Christmas type names (most still are btw) but otherwise had absolutely nothing seasonal about them. They were bland, mid to lower strength beers aimed at the Christmas drinker market.

That market still exists (many bar and pub owners would wish it also existed in January) but the beers are changing. For example Hook Norton’s Twelve Days is a 5.5% porter. Clearly a beer with some tradition, well, first brewed in 1991, so we can see how the market is evolving.

Greene King’s Rocking Rudolph is really the only one from the old style Christmas list still on it. Most of the beers are either darker with some element of spice or, another interesting development, IPAs brewed with modern hop varieties.

What however of the new wave of craft and indy brewers that have in the main previously eschewed Christmas beers but not seasonal ones. I’ll have a look at that in a further update. It is work in drinking progress