This year, the holiday beers almost outnumber the Christmas tree lots. This is a trend I find encouraging. These richer, sometimes spiced, holiday beers are a brewer's way of saying thanks to customers for a year of patronage. It is a concept I warm to.
This holiday season, one Baltimore neighborhood is using beer as an incentive for folks to decorate their homes. First prize in the Union Square Association house tour and holiday door decorating contest, to be held Sunday afternoon, are beers made by the neighborhood's home brewers. Who knows where this merger of Martha Stewart and Homer Simpson lifestyles will lead, but I applaud it.
Another cause for joy in this holiday season is the birth of a brewery. Marc Tewey's Brimstone Brewery is making beer in the old National Premium Brewery in East Baltimore. Several years ago, Tewey began brewing beer in his Loyola College dorm room. He subsequently refined the recipe and got a brewery in Pennsylvania to bottle his Brimstone Amber Ale and ship it to Maryland. The three draft beers he makes in East Baltimore, Winter Ale, Amber Ale, and Blueberry Wheat, are sold on tap in taverns.
Brimstone joins the ranks of Maryland brewers who make holiday beers. Baltimore Brewing Co. is making a version of its prize-winning Doppelbock, Hugh Sisson's South Baltimore Brewing Co. has tapped his Prancer's Pride, Oxford Brewing has a holiday brew with the winsome name of Santa Class, and the Wharf Rat pubs near Camden Yards and in Fells Point serve their Christmas Ale three ways -- carbonated, hand-pumped and served from a special nine-gallon barrel called a Firkin.
These holiday drafts were not ready a few weeks ago when a few other hop heads and I gathered at Sisson's in South Baltimore to taste 14 holiday brews. Our tasting was limited to bottled holiday beers that were reasonably easy to find. The tasters were brewer Hugh Sisson, retailers Dave Butcher and Tim Hillman, and students of the brewing art Greg Santori and Volker Stewart.
The advanced palates in the group named the spices -- nutmeg, allspice and bayberry -- in what they were tasting. I scribbled such notes as, "This one tastes as good as it smells."
When we finished and picked our top five, the virtually unanimous favorite was the spiced Anchor Christmas ($10 a six-pack). This was the one I thought tasted as good as it smelled. Other tasters praised its use of nutmeg and allspice, and referred to it as "intense but poised." Right behind it in popularity were the Hampshire Ale ($6 a six-pack), which had pleasing citrus flavors, and the Catamount Christmas ($6 a six-pack), which, I was told, used Cascade hops without going overboard.
Some liked the Sierra Nevada Celebration ($9 a six-pack), an ale with bodacious flavors of Cascade hops mixed with milder notes of cinnamon and oranges. Chocolate lovers, myself among them, preferred the Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout ($7 a six-pack). Snow Goose ($7.50 a six-pack), made by Wild Goose brewery in Cambridge, showed well. The advanced palates detected Fuggles and Goldings hops. I tasted a hint of chocolate. Another crowd pleaser was the Saranac Season's Best ($6 a six-pack), which was not highly spiced and had a pleasant, malty flavor. It was was made in Utica, N.Y., as was the New Amsterdam Winter Lager ($6 a six-pack), which tasted lighter than the Saranac.
The two "Sam's," Sam Smith Winter Welcome ($4 for an 18-ounce bottle) and Sam Adams Winter Lager ($7 a six-pack), are always big sellers at Christmas. This year's holiday beer from Sam Adams had a surprisingly bitter finish, which I liked. The advanced palates said the Sam Smith had a "butterscotch" flavor.
The Harpoon Winter Warmer ($6 a six-pack) was too spiced for me. Pete's Wicked Warmer ($7 a six-pack) had a raspberry flavor, which I don't like. Most everyone agreed that Young Winter Ale ($9 a six-pack) had off flavors, and the Wild Boar Spiced Christmas ($6 a six-pack) was peppery and unbalanced.
After the tasting ended, I found a few more beers to sample. The Coors Winterfest ($6 asix-pack) was much maltier than the regular-season Coors. And just the other day, I tasted the holiday offering from Frederick Brewing Co., makers of Blue Ridge Ale. It is called Cranberry Noel ($7.50 a six-pack). It is a pretty good way to say "happy holidays," even if the name might remind you of a dancer on The Block.