O, Christmas Beer

Regional beer trends, a historical brewery, and Finback's BQE release

Christmas beers aplenty at The Dayton Beer Company

So, I went to Dayton, Ohio last weekend, and while there was one true brewery highlight above all others (see the Brewery Visit of the Week below), there was a trend among breweries there this time of year that was impossible to ignore: Christmas beer.

If you haven’t spent much time in the American Midwest, you might only associate this with some of the larger-distribution seasonal beers — namely, Sierra Nevada Celebration and Anchor Christmas Ale. But in Dayton, nearly every brewery I visited had at least one, if not multiple, Christmas-themed beers. Many were fruited or spiced with things we traditionally associate with the holidays: cranberries, spruce tips, orange peel, and allspice, though not all were bold and intense in their flavors. Every bartender would call them out when I asked broader questions about the beer menu, suggesting this is a tradition there that’s in high demand.

There’s only one other place where I noticed this before, and that was Sweden. I visited there in late November one year and every beer bar boasted of their selection of julöl — literally, Christmas beer. While the history of Sweden’s tradition dates back to the 13th century, the tradition of Christmas beer in Ohio is likely rooted in one major commercial example: Great Lakes Christmas Ale. That beer, a hop-forward amber ale with honey, ginger, and cinnamon is a bit of a phenomenon in Ohio. The beer has been brewed regularly since 1992, so by craft beer standards, it has a long history. I’ve known Ohioans-turned-New Yorkers who chase it down every year and are eager to share it with other beer geeks. So it’s no surprise that other breweries have hopped on the trend — nearly a dozen breweries I visited in mid-December around the Dayton area brewed their own special beer for the holidays. Sure, there’s the occasional brewery around here that releases a holiday beer, but the fact that it was so prevalent in Ohio led me to label it as a regional trend.

I’m a little too excited about regional trends in beer, probably because of how much travel I do for beer in the first place. I remember latching onto the concept of hoppy amber ales as a late-00s trend in the Pacific Northwest, marveling at the influence Blue Moon has had over Witbier in the Mountain West, and finding fascinating the obsession over Scotch Ales in Montana. Chalk this up as another regional trend that I’ll come back to Ohio to explore more in the future.

Finback BQE Release this weekend

Just in time for those dark days of winter, Finback’s annual barrel-aged imperial stout series, BQE, releases this Saturday. The tradition started back in 2015 with the intended focus of using chocolate and coffee from small purveyors in either Brooklyn or Queens, and has evolved into a multi-variant release. This year’s release includes five different variants, including one special barrel-aged version, all made with coffee from Finback’s on-site coffee roastery in Brooklyn.

• 2022 BQE Chocolate Coffee is a Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout with cacao nibs and Brazil Yuki Minami coffee weighing in at 14.8% ABV

• 2022 BQE Vietnamese Coffee is a Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout with cacao nibs, Vietnam Lotus coffee, vanilla bean, and condensed milk weighing in at 14.8% ABV

• 2022 BQE Double Banana Coconut is a Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout with cacao nibs, Brazil Yuki Minami coffee, banana, and coconut weighing in at 14.8% ABV

• 2022 BQE Double Nut Caramel is a Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout with cacao nibs, Brazil Yuki Minami coffee, walnut, hazelnut, and caramel weighing in at 14.8% ABV

• 2022 BQE Double Barrel is a Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout aged one year in Heaven Hill barrels and one year in Pappy barrels, weighing in at 17.1% ABV

These are all taproom-only releases that will be available in bottles and on draft at both Finback locations on Saturday starting at noon. In addition, you can pre-order bottles for pickup on the Oznr app starting at 6pm tonight. Keep tabs on Finback’s Instagram for more details on when and how you can snag bottles.

These bottles are meant to be shared with this kind of boozy sweetness, though I enjoyed single-handedly working my way through a bottle of the Double Nut Caramel over several nights this week, sipping — perhaps appropriately — from a coffee mug. (Full disclosure: Finback sent me two bottles of variants of the BQE at no cost to me. Probably because they know I get unreasonably excited about these.)

Brewery Tracker

Total brewery count: 2,876
Total breweries visited in 2022: 347
Total breweries visited in Ohio: 59

Brewery Visit of the Week

Brewery #2862, Carillon Brewing Co., Dayton, Ohio (Visited 9-Dec-2022)

There’s plenty of one-of-a-kind breweries I’ve visited over the years, but still, nearly three thousand breweries into my adventure, I’m uncovering places that truly stand out in an industry that has a lot of homogeneity. Carillon might take the cake. Its claim to fame is that it’s the only production brewery in the U.S. in a museum, but that barely scratches the surface of what makes this place unique.

The Carillon Historical Park is an open-air museum that celebrates Dayton’s passage through time, featuring buildings from several eras, exhibits that depict everything from the city’s founding to its significance in aviation (the Wright Brothers are from there, after all) to the influence immigration had on the city. But if you’re just here for the beer, you’ll still get a taste of the city’s history — quite literally.

Carillon brews its beer traditionally in the style the city’s German, English, and Irish settlers would have brewed it in the 1850s. A brick furnace high above the taproom, fed with wood axed by hand, fires the brew kettle, the entire brewing process is gravity-fed, and oak barrels for fermentation nearly overwhelm the space. The way that the hand-made brewing equipment looks so rustic might make you think this is all for show, but Carillon Brewing is a working brewery in every way, from the brewers hand-milling malt to the bartenders dressed in period garb. The beer pulls from local ingredients often and historical recipes always. The highlight for me was a mug of their Kentucky Common poured from a firkin, lovely on a cold night with the warming glow of the fireplace to accompany the beer.

Beer made by hand in historical tradition isn’t easy by any stretch, but they don’t do this because it’s easy. Carillon does their part to keep both brewing traditions and beer styles alive by making old-fashioned beer the old-fashioned way. It’s a true gem and should be a must-visit if you go to Dayton.

Long Listen of the Week

I like to talk about beer as much as I enjoy writing and reading about it, so I might as well share an episode of a podcast I was on earlier this month. I met Nigel Woodberry on a couple of recent trips to Kansas City, and he’s a great guy who’s super passionate about beer. He coaxed me into coming onto his podcast with his co-host Nick Parker, and the result was an absolute delight.

One Last Thing

It’s nearly the end of the year, and as part of my annual New York City Beer Superlatives that will drop in two weeks, I’m asking for your nominees for Beer of the Year. Let’s see if we can find a crowd favorite. The rules: it had to be released this year, and it had to be brewed in New York City. Leave a comment with your suggestions!

Cheers,
Chris