The beers of Christmas past
Special beverages created to mark the season will line up alongside wine on the dinner table this year but this is not some new gimmick, MAGGIE RITCHIE reports
FESTIVE beers like Hoppy Christmas and Santa’s Sledgehammer may seem like a jolly 21st-century marketing ploy aimed at today’s tipplers – but in reality they have been a brewer’s gimmick for the best part of 3,000 years.
It all started with the druids, who served up special beer at the winter solstice religious ceremony, with the oldest beer discovered at a Bronze Age stone circle on the Isle of Arran.
Ever since, brewers have been making Christmas beer to bring cheer on dark winter nights, as archives at Glasgow University show, with labels, bottles, drink trays and signs dating back to the 1940s advertising Christmas beers by Scottish breweries such as Younger’s, Mcewan’s, Tennent’s and Drybrough.
“Brewing was a massive industry and Christmas beers were hugely popular in the heyday of the Scottish brewing giants,” says senior archivist Clare Paterson.
“It used to be that every town in Scotland had its own brewery but, in the 1980s, breweries consolidated and there were fewer of them.
“Beer is now making a comeback. Today, hipster tastes for craft ales have given rise to a host of independent brewers and it’s good to see new Christmas beers emerging.”
Scotland has more than 130 breweries, with more than 8,000 staff, and drinkers are being urged to support this homegrown sector over the festive season as part of a bid to make it a £1 billion industry by 2030. The national agency, Scotland Food & Drink, says its ambition is to make Scottish beer the “most desirable in the world”.
Recent successes include Innis & Gunn, which is planning to build a brewery in Edinburgh, where the company was founded in 2003.
As part of this drive, brewers hope their beer will find its way on to the Christmas dinner table as an alternative to wine and bubbly.
Hilary Jones, chairwoman of the Brewing Industry Leadership Group, said: “Christmas beers go brilliantly with Christmas pudding and cake as they are made with spices such as ginger and cloves that go well with dried fruit.
“They have a higher alcohol content and are meant to be sipped with food, but they are still less alcoholic than wine at around 5.5 to 6 per cent. They also have health benefits from the trace minerals in coloured malt.”
Scottish beers are traditionally sweeter, fruitier and less hoppy than those made elsewhere – qualities that were designed to please the national sweet tooth but also make them extremely palatable at this time of year.
“In the 1980s, Gordon Highland Scotch Ale was shipped out in bulk to Belgium, where the taste is for strong beer. Now independent craft brewers are going back to making these ‘heavy’ beers that were once so popular,” said Ms Jones, who is also a director of Heidi Beers, which brews all West tipples.
“Independent breweries enjoy experimenting with seasonal flavours so Christmas beers are a good fit,” she added.
Pubs have traditionally tried to entice punters into their premises over the festive season with decor and gimmicks such as Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer beer pumps.
Christmas beers are now making a comeback thanks to independent breweries which are making flavourful ales as part of festive marketing campaigns.
Scotland’s independent breweries’ offerings this year include Arran Brewery’s Fireside, Brew Dog’s Hoppy Christmas and Santa Paws, and Cairngorm’s Santa’s Sledgehammer.
Gerald Michaluk of Arran Brewery said: “Traditionally, brewers make Christmas ales that are stronger to see you though the winter nights. These beers tend to be darker because spices will make the beer go cloudy and a dark beer will hide that. In the old days, everyone used to drink beer – men, women and children, who drank small beer that was triple-washed so it was only 0.5% and therefore non-alcoholic. Beer was safer than water, which could give you cholera, typhus and dysentery.
“Christmas craft beers are trending now but festive beers go back to pagan times when they were drunk at the Solstice to mark the end of winter.”
Mr Michaluk will be drinking beer with his Christmas dinner. “Ale is a lot less alcoholic than wine and is full of nutrients. It’s a great alternative. And after Brexit, who knows, we may all be drinking a lot more of it.”
Christmas beers were hugely popular in the heyday of the Scottish brewing giants