For the past 30 years, I’ve looked forward to the holidays for the special mixed packs of beers sold by craft brewers. While I’m now somewhat jaded, given the huge selection of beer available all the time, every December I’m still excited to find out what’s included in the latest seasonal sets.
This time of year, we get spiced beers and strong beers and sweet beers that hew to the old tradition of breweries making something celebratory and out of the ordinary as a way to thank their customers.
It’s, of course, also a season of parties, even in the midst of an ominously re-energized pandemic, and these mixed packs are popular for get togethers. Show up at the door with a 12-pack of four different beers and there’s no doubt something for everyone. (Be warned: At every party there’s almost always one beer in a pack that no one wants to try.)
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One of the first holiday mix packs to be produced in the modern era came from Saranac, at the F.X. Matt Brewery in Utica, New York. I remember buying their 12 Beers of Christmas back in the early 1990s and giving them to friends as gifts. I wasn’t alone. Fred Matt, the president of the family-owned brewery, remembers those days fondly. “In the early times of 12 Beers, it was something like 74 percent [of consumers] brought it to a party or gave it as a gift,” he told me. He’s also quick to point out that “in those days, there wasn’t the selection there is today.”
Back in the day, Saranac’s 12 Beers of Christmas pack actually contained 12 different beers—some of which you couldn’t get any other time of year. Beer lovers would eagerly await for the special lineup and buy several packs to get more than a taste of something rare, like the Saranac Stout.
Matt has backed off from that kind of variety in acknowledgment of a changed market. “It’s to show people what we can do,” Matt said. “But you don’t want to be too far out there and 12 beers today can be risky. People can look at that and say, ‘there’s two beers I don’t like, I’m not buying it.’ And people wanted more than one bottle of each type, so we went to six different beers.”
Some brewers still hang it right out there with full-on variety. Mass Bay Brewing, in Boston, does three different holiday mix packs—the Harpoon Wintry Mix (with the old-school spiced Winter Warmer that they’ve been making since the early 1990s) and the unfiltered wheat UFO Northern Lights have three cans each of four different beers. But their Clown Shoes pack is a wild mix of twelve different beers, ranging from the Barista Breakfast Brown Ale and Mango Farm IPA to crushers like Advent Party Crasher Imperial Stout and One Man Holiday Belgian Quadrupel Ale.
Dan Kenary, co-founder and CEO of the brewery, explains why each pack is different. “For the Harpoon team, the approach is always to ask the question ‘what mix would you want to bring to a holiday party with friends?’ For the UFO team, it’s about finding something that beer drinkers and non-beer drinkers alike could enjoy. The Clown Shoes team takes the ‘advent calendar’ approach and creates a lineup of 12 different unique beers. That way the consumer really gets taken on a tasting adventure—either with a group in a night or by themselves over the course of the season.”
Stone Brewing (San Diego and Richmond) does 12 different beers as well, but they’re much more focused. The brand brings the hop heat to its mix, the Stone 12 Days of IPAs, with beers like Stone Hazy IPA and Japanese Green Tea IPA.
“We’ve always had a 12-bottle mixed pack and we’ve always had a thing for IPAs, so it just made a lot of sense,” said Lizzie Younkin, Stone’s director of public relations and communications. “We knew we could really stand out if we leveraged some of Stone’s retired beers with huge fan followings.”
But it was the return of another beer in another holiday mix pack that really has people talking. After dropping from the lineup last year for the first time since the 1990s, Samuel Adams Old Fezziwig returned to the brewery’s Beers of Cheer set this year and beer drinkers rejoiced.
While drinks writers perhaps too freely say “beer drinkers rejoiced” about a range of releases, it’s more than appropriate here. I was surprised to see the amount of happy talk about the return of this classic “winter warmer” style beer.
“Old Fezziwig is a spiced ale inspired by Scrooge’s jolly first employer of Christmas Past in Charles Dickens’ holiday tale, A Christmas Carol, known for his joyful spirit and legendary holiday parties,” Rich Ferrell, Samuel Adams’ brewer told me. “We first brewed this beer in 1995 and it’s been well-loved ever since. Old Fezziwig is bursting with holiday spices and festive spirit fit for a celebration.”
Fans of this nicely-balanced spiced ale (four words that rarely go together) have begged for years for separate packages of Old Fezziwig, but except for occasional draft releases, if you want it, you have to buy the whole package. And “never say never,” Ferrell allowed, but for now, that’s how it’s going to be. So, if you want it, you’ve got to buy the whole holiday pack.
Beers of Cheer, Wintry Mix, 12 Beers...clearly brewers have some fun with names on these holiday sets, and one of the easiest to come up with must have been Jingle Bell’s, the mixed pack put out by the Bell’s Brewery of Kalamazoo, Michigan. This is only the second year for the pack, which is encouraging for the future of the concept; I’d hate to see these disappear!
Jingle Bell’s has four beers, including the brewery’s flagship Two Hearted Ale. Normally, the inclusion of a flagship will bring groans from drinkers, who can get those beers any time, but I don’t know anyone who complains about getting more bottles of Two Hearted. The set also includes Christmas Ale, a malty-rich Scotch beer and Bright White, a Belgian wheat.
But the most special beer in the Jingle Bell’s pack is Wild Spruce Chase. The brewery’s communications manager Josh Smith described it as “an IPA brewed with spruce tips harvested from the mountains of Colorado.” If you’ve never had a spruce tip beer, don’t expect something super piney. Spruce tips are actually quite subtle and sweet and make a nice addition to an IPA.
I saved my favorite holiday release this year for last: the Most Wonderful Beer Pack from Tröegs Brewing in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The mix of beer includes the brewery’s excellent year-round doublebock, Troegenator, and the hugely popular Mad Elf, a Belgian-influenced strong ale made with cherries and honey that weighs in at 11 percent ABV. But get this, the pack is ingeniously built around the idea of blending the different beers together.
Try fixing the Chocolate Elf: half Mad Elf, half Grand Cacao Chocolate Stout. The concoction is reminiscent of the delicious guilty pleasure chocolate-covered cherries. I also like the Mad Dreams, which is a third Mad Elf and two-thirds DreamWeaver, Tröegs’s classic German wheat beer that dials up the spice while easing back on the booze.
The beers, the fun, the big boozy flavors...as brewery co-founder John Trogner said, “show up to a holiday party with one or two of these packs, and you’re going to be everyone’s favorite guest.”
That’s still what holiday beer mix packs are all about. There are a lot more out there, including a mixed pack of small-brewery German beers (available at Costco) that you won’t see anywhere else. Get a few mixes and bring the gift of variety to your pandemic-safe gatherings, or just stay home and sample at your own pace. Happy holidays!
