Here are a few things that fill me with trepidation:

A) The ‘Beware: Danger of Falling Rocks Ahead’ road sign. Nothing like this one to fill a brief stretch of a journey with the looming fear of impending random death coming through the sunroof uninvited. If I see this sign, I’m drawn to travel the upcoming distance looking up and out of the window at the cliff face from which said boulders could tumble at any minute. This means that even if I get through without having my skull caved in the chances are I’ll drive into the back of an Eddie Stobart truck.

B) Performance reviews: Luckily, I currently have a job which doesn’t feature these, but plenty of times in the past I’ve been confronted with the opportunity to sit down on an annual basis with a line manager and have my every flaw picked apart with surgeon-like precision. Anyone who carries out these sessions for a living is basically like the killer from Se7en without the laudible can-do attitude to dealing with society’s problems.

C) Being on the front row at a comedy gig: Either you’ll become the object of some hilarity at your expense or, even worse, the comedian will try something out based on picking on you which will fail. This means that the comic will try desperately to squeeze at least a titter from this improvised material at which point one of you will get angry and this will degenerate into a slanging match and an on-stage nervous breakdown. I’m staggered at how often I’ve seen this happen.

D) Christmas ales: Here’s a fact- nobody really enjoys them. Any beer designed specifically for a short period at the end of December when everyone is already stuffed to the gills with dead poultry and chocolate is clearly on a hiding to nothing. I’m utterly convinced that Christmas ales are the last refuge for a brewery’s attempts at a beer that end up with what they would optimistically deem to be ‘character’ but what normal, sane folk would class as ‘liquid misery’. This is why Christmas ales tend to live at the back of the cupboard of even the most seasoned ale drinker until spring cleaning occurs and they can safely be hoisted into the recycling. A few bottles, however, slipped through the net from this year’s Yuletide selection at my girlfriend’s parents’ house and therefore these 4 brews were passed onto me- giving me a thought. Removed from the jolity of the festive season, what do Christmas ales actually taste of? Can they stand up of their own if drunk in, say, mid-July?

Well…

First up is the Christmas Ale by Shepherd Neame. This seems like a safe place to start- it’s by a brewery I’m aware of and it’s got a pleasant amber colour. It’s also, I note, 7% so it strikes me as a good idea to get the strong one out of the way early doors. On first taste it is actually reminiscent of Christmas, but only in the same way that the Channel Islands are reminiscent of tales of Nazi occupation. It feels like woozy overindulgence and has a distinct flavour of indigestion and overpowering spice. Drinking this feels like your tongue is being ram-raided. Trying to force the beer down of a typical Tuesday evening presents a sturdy challenge, I can only imagine that attempting to knock it back within a few hours of a full christmas dinner would be nigh on impossible. You’d be better off trying to drink your new Xmas sweater.

Christmas ales- warning, should not be drunk by anyone

Next is Seriously Bad Elf from Ridgeway Brewing in Oxfordshire. I really ought to have checked out the strengths of these beers before I tucked in as it turns out the 7%er was merely an apperatif to this double ale which weighs in at 9%. This is definitely a theme with winter ales- alcohol levels which come dangerously close to rendering a beer flammable. I’m not sure that this sort of content renders a drink particularly useful in wintery conditions- if it did then surely it stands to reason that any polar expedition should be accompanied by a few bottles of tequila and I’m pretty convinced that they usually aren’t. Getting back to the beer, it’s got a first taste that you really ought to be provided with a warning for- it hits you at the very heart of your central nervous system. It’s a little like walking into a darkened room then having hundreds of people burst out and yell ‘surprise’ while dressed as victims of serious industrial accidents. Why this is deemed suitable for Christmas I couldn’t possible tell you. Once you’re braced for each mouthful, it settles down to simply being the beerest beer the world has ever seen, like all concepts of beer have been concentrated into one bottle. This is the ale equivalent of a quasar. To improve everyone’s Yuletide celebrations, the Queen should have to down one of these while delivering his Christmas speech. It’d be amazing.

Third up, also by Ridgeway Brewing and continuing their theme of horrendous elf puns is ‘Criminally Bad Elf’. It is also becoming clear that I really should have read all four labels before I started. This is a ‘barley-wine style ale’ and packs a full 10.5% alcohol, a level at which a beer should only be used for hand-to-hand combat. After the experience of the last beer, I’m fully prepared from the first swig for whatever this brew can throw at me.

Right, before we go any further, read that last sentence back. Done it? Good. Congratulations. You have just read the most naive and utterly wrong sentence ever.

Nothing could prepare anyone for this beer, short of having all your taste buds burned out with caustic soda. And even then the first drink would still make your eyes water like a Belgian fountain. The second swig merely confirms that the first one wasn’t joking, much like when Hans Gruber shoots Ellis just to show he wasn’t messing about with Joe Takagi. Even after nearly half a pint of experience it’s still utterly impossible to knock back any of this drink without coughing. This can only be a Christmas drink designed for one of those branches of Christianity that goes in less for the celebration of Jesus’s birth and more for constant rounds of self-abasement and flagellation. And it’s still 10.5%. It’s basically like mugging yourself.

Finally, mercifully, and again from Ridgeway Brewing we have a porter called Santa’s Butt which weighs in at a practically tap water-esque 6%. This one actually tastes quite nice in that roasted, oaty manner that a good porter does though the apocalypse my tastebuds have undergone through this session, combined with the mind bending alcohol levels, means this perceived pleasentness may be the result of a combination of severe oral injury and encroaching metal incapacitation. However, it suffers from the same problem as the others and what appears to be the paradox at the heart of Christmas ales- it’s far too heavy and hefty to even be drunk after a day where I’ve purposely avoided eating too much in order to make room for it. At Xmas, they’d distend my stomach so much there’s a chance of it falling out entirely and making a break for it.

So drinking Christmas beers in July? On the whole, dreadful, deadly and not worth the bother. But drinking Christmas ales at Christmas? That’s just the act of a madman.

Beers · Christmas · Ridgeway Brewing · Shepherd Neame