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  3. Beers to Appease the Entire Family This Holiday Season

Beers to Appease the Entire Family This Holiday Season

By Food & Wine Updated November 13, 2018
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Old Style
Credit: Courtesy of G. Heileman Brewing Company
The holiday season is all about spending time with family – which is why it’s a good idea to have plenty of beer around to keep everyone’s holiday spirits high. But often times, even something as simple as providing proper social lubrication can lead to conflict: Your great aunt hasn’t drank anything other than a Coors Light since 1986; meanwhile, your nephew prefers double dry-hopped collaboration brews that can only be purchased at the brewery for three hours out of the year.Needless to say, no variety 12-pack will ever be perfect for every beer drinker’s tastes. However, working around a common theme—great cold weather beers with broad appeal that won’t require you to drive to the brewery to score them—we’ve put together this diverse selection of 12 beers that will have something for everyone. – Mike Pomranz
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Maui Brewing Coconut Hiwa Porter

Maui Brewing Coconut Hiwa Porter
Credit: Edward Smith / Maui Brewing Co.

Coconut Hiwa Porter from Maui Brewing Company provides the best of both worlds: Who doesn’t dream of escaping freezing December days to spend the holidays in sunny Hawaii? But this beer adds its tropical coconut pop to a creamy, cocoa-tinged porter that works double duty as a cold weather treat for any family member with a bit of a sweet tooth.

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Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout

Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout
Credit: Courtesy of Bell’s Brewery

When it comes to beer pairings, nothing goes together like cold weather and a dark stout. Though the beer world is overrun with huge imperial stouts offering up the thick mouthfeel and massive alcohol levels to ward off even the worst arctic blasts, Kalamazoo Stout from Michigan’s Bell’s Brewery is a classic American stout with ample chocolate and coffee notes clocking in at a more sensible 6 percent ABV that will also help ward off any drunken family arguments.

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Hardywood Gingerbread Stout

Hardywood Gingerbread Stout
Credit: Kate Magee

Plenty of more hardline Christmas beers do exist, with names as straightforward as “Mad Elf” or as far out as “Christmas Eve in a New York City Hotel Room.” But working under the pretense that we’re aiming to please, Virginia’s Hardywood Gingerbread Stout has become a Christmas classic up there with It’s a Wonderful Life: a massive imperial milk stout that drinks like gingerbread men dancing in chocolate.

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Deschutes Brewery Jubelale

Deschutes Brewery Jubelale
Credit: Courtesy of Deschutes Brewery

Of course, stouts and porters aren’t the only beers perfect for winter. As the name suggests, winter ales and winter warmers are literally built for the season and tend to swap out chocolate and coffee for other dark flavors like dried fruits and toffee, before being enhanced with seasonal spices. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery releasing its textbook winter beer Jubelale, which is sure to please those who want their holiday brews to taste like the holidays.

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Sierra Nevada Celebration

Sierra Nevada Celebration
Credit: Courtesy of Sierra Nevada

Speaking of classics, first brewed in 1981, Celebration is one of America’s first seasonal beer releases. It’s also an IPA, making in one of the earliest American incarnations of this style. And yet, all these decades later, Celebration is still a fantastic winter IPA with a citrus rind edge and an evergreen backbone. This beer is a holiday tradition worth upholding.

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Dogfish Head Pennsylvania Tuxedo

Dogfish Head Pennsylvania Tuxedo
Credit: Courtesy of Dogfish Head

Hops are often known for having “foresty” or “evergreen” notes, but if you really want to feel like you’re drinking a Christmas tree, find a beer like Pennsylvania Tuxedo from Delaware’s Dogfish Head. This pale ale is also brewed with fresh green spruce tips to help make the aroma of your beer match the scent of your living room in December. Spruce beers aren’t perfect for every occasion, but they can get almost anyone in the holiday mood.

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Allagash Hoppy Table Beer

Allagash Hoppy Table Beer
Credit: Courtesy of Allagash Brewing Company

Want something a bit simpler? Allagash’s newest year-round offering is a beer worthy of drinking all year. Citrusy, delicately yeasty and only 4.8 percent ABV, this easy drinking brew can fuel even the longest of Scrabble or Risk games and earn an appreciative nod from even beer adverse relatives.

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Lindemans Gueuze Cuvee Rene

Lindemans Gueuze Cuvee Rene
Credit: Courtesy of Brewery Lindemans

With their tart, mouth puckering flavors, sour beers are great crossover brews for people who might typically prefer cider or wine. Lindemans is a name many people are familiar with thanks to their fruit-flavored lambics, but the Belgian brewery’s Gueuze Cuvee Rene serves as a drinkable introduction to the world of proper sour beers that can please aficionados, but also pique the interest of the unconverted. This selection can also help appease any old-school family members who only like “imported” beers.

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Jack’s Abby Excess IPL

Jack’'s Abby Excess IPL
Credit: Courtesy of Jack's Abby Brewing

Almost every beer geek knows someone who tries to circumvent craft beer conversations with “I’m more of a lager drinker.” If that applies to a member of your family, toss them a Jack’s Abby Excess. This “IPL” is technically an India pale lager, but it’s triple dry-hopped to drink like some of the trendiest IPAs on the market. If this brew can’t enthrall their taste buds, at least the resident beer snob in your family will gladly down the remnants.

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Wasatch Devastator Double Bock

Courtesy of Wasatch Brewery
Credit: Wasatch Devastator Double Bock

Another oft forgotten style of lager is the doppelbock, a darker, fuller lager with notes of dried fruit, molasses and bread. Utah’s Wasatch Brewery offers up an approachable take on this “double bock” style that is available in cans throughout much of the Midwest.

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Farmer Willie’s Craft Ginger Beer

Farmer Willie’s Craft Ginger Beer
Credit: Allegra Anderson Photography, 2017

For the family member that literally will not drink any beer, here’s a trick to keep up your sleeve: Farmer Willie’s Craft Ginger Beer. Unlike other beer alternatives that can be painfully sweet, the alcoholic ginger beer from this Massachusetts-based brand is bone dry, surprisingly complex and completely quaffable at 4.5 percent ABV. Even the beer diehards in the house will be grabbing for one of these to mix things up.

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Old Style

Old Style
Credit: Courtesy of G. Heileman Brewing Company

In the end, the holidays are about making sure everyone is happy. We can roll our eyes at American macro lagers, but they’re still the biggest selling beers in the country, and it’s more than likely that at least one family member would just prefer the beer equivalent of listening to “White Christmas” for the millionth time. So throw a can of Old Style in the mix: It’s a perfectly serviceable pale lager and just might spark a conversation about Christmases past.

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    1 of 12 Maui Brewing Coconut Hiwa Porter
    2 of 12 Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout
    3 of 12 Hardywood Gingerbread Stout
    4 of 12 Deschutes Brewery Jubelale
    5 of 12 Sierra Nevada Celebration
    6 of 12 Dogfish Head Pennsylvania Tuxedo
    7 of 12 Allagash Hoppy Table Beer
    8 of 12 Lindemans Gueuze Cuvee Rene
    9 of 12 Jack’s Abby Excess IPL
    10 of 12 Wasatch Devastator Double Bock
    11 of 12 Farmer Willie’s Craft Ginger Beer
    12 of 12 Old Style

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