The Newest Winter Lites

When you visit Crown City Brewery in Pasadena this season, you’ll find a slimmed-down Father Christmas.

Father Christmas is the brew pub’s seasonal ale, and it has joined a notable movement away from heavy, highly spiced holiday brews that had shown signs of wearing out their welcome.

“A few years ago it was the battle of the spices,” says Mike Lanzarotta, Crown City’s master brewer. “Everyone was trying to top everyone else. The beers were getting more and more flavorful to the point of being overwhelming.”

In a trend that not all beer lovers are happy about, some leading holiday brews are moving to the lighter side, reversing the course of the last two decades, when more and more breweries introduced seasonals that were getting stronger, hoppier and spicier.

Bartenders noticed that their customers would sit down and order one seasonal and then go back to their favorite beers. More alarmingly, larger breweries last winter reported the first substantial returns of unsold holiday beers.

So this year, seasonal brews have a lighter touch. The 1997 version of Father Christmas, for instance, is made with malt and hops and only three spices--down from seven or eight in the past. The result is a quite refreshing brew: amber, medium-bodied and offering a delicately crisp spice finish rounded with brown sugar.

“I think that this year, people are looking for a good beer that’s not too complicated,” says Lanzarotta, who likes to say that he faces his harshest critics every day among his regular customers. “They want something they can have a couple of glasses of.”

The trend is another intriguing development in a ritual that beer lovers have come to relish. Every year about Thanksgiving, they begin sampling the new vintages of holiday brews. They try to guess the ingredients--which brewers often keep secret--and then they discuss it all at great length, usually recalling wondrous beers of Christmases past.

Holiday brews were no doubt inspired by the old English wassail bowls of spiced, sweetened wines and brandies. Brewers in the United States honored that tradition by making spiced ales more than a century ago, but the practice seemed to dry up when Prohibition began in 1920.

The tradition was reborn in 1975, when Anchor Brewing Co. of San Francisco made its first Christmas Ale, the beverage widely regarded as inspiring the modern American holiday brew movement.

Anchor owner Fritz Maytag recalls that the only winter seasonal on the market in the mid-1970s was Grupo Modelo’s Noche Buena, a dark, full-bodied and malty Vienna lager that is still on the market. In those days, mulled wine dominated holiday parties; brewers were content to ship their usual goods in gift wrap-style packaging.

The newest Anchor Christmas Ale is much more delicate than last year’s version, yet it unveils a veritable “Nutcracker Suite” of flavorings that seem to change subtly with every sip. At first, you may taste citrus, then spruce, then licorice, then cinnamon. The brew is very dark but surprisingly light on the palate. Its sweetness is very pleasant, almost on the dry side, and its intriguing chorus of subtle flavorings quickly invites you to enjoy a second pint.

Maytag never reveals the ingredients in the ale, but he readily admits that he has made it lighter.

“I think it’s a little softer and friendlier than last year,” he says.

“There is a certain smoothness that I think we’ve achieved that I just think is fantastic,” he adds. “If you knew what was in there, you’d be amazed.”

Anchor, on tap at many Southland locations and sold at better liquor stores, is a good brew to start with for an evening of tasting. Keep in mind the dictum that if your brew is spiced, it is probably a fresh ale, while holiday lagers are beer-like, with sweet, full maltiness.

An exception to this rule is Pete’s Wicked Winter Brew, a hybrid made with lager yeast and shorter-cycle ale brewing methods. It also contains raspberries and nutmeg, imparting a sweetness that some regular beer drinkers may find cloying and a bit discordant, but one that has driven the label to bestseller status.

Pete’s founder Pete Slosberg says Wicked Winter, made at Stroh’s breweries in Minnesota and North Carolina, was the No. 1 seasonal brew last year, claiming 30% of nationwide craft beer winter season sales.

Pete’s Wicked Winter is found at most retail chains, but regional craft brews are well worth hunting down.

One of the more interesting is Bert Grant’s Winter Ale, available at Trader Joe’s markets and at several Southland locations on draft. This is a dark and malty beverage with a gloriously large nose arising from fresh hops gathered from fields near Grant’s brewery in Yakima, Wash.

Grant’s Winter is another brew that has been noticeably toned down. As recently as two years ago, it bore a suggestion that it be warmed a bit before being served--kind of an instant wassail. But the new, milder version has turned off some of its old fans. Sam Samaniego, for one, refuses to sell the new Grant’s in his San Gabriel cafe, the Stuffed Sandwich.

“You put it in your mouth, and it just lies there and doesn’t do anything,” Samaniego says. “You swallow it and say, ‘What happened? Where did it go?’ It doesn’t have the body and the character that it previously did.”

Samaniego gave up on Grant’s and another old favorite, Jack Frost Winter Doppelbock by Oregon’s Saxer Brewing, which also arrived this season in a new, lighter version. Instead of those, he is serving the 1994 through 1997 Anchor Christmas Ales--he has kept the older kegs on ice--on his four taps.

When the Anchors start to run out, Samaniego plans to start serving another festive regional brew, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s Celebration Ale. A strong India pale ale, Celebration is dry-hopped--an extra step in the brewing process that adds a vivid aromatic rush. Regrettably, it will be in short supply this year because of production problems that arose during a major expansion at the brewery in Chico, 90 miles north of Sacramento.

“Celebration is one of my all-time favorites,” says Tom Dalldorf, editor of Celebrator Beer News, a Hayward, Calif., trade magazine. “Like a very assertive wine, this is a beer that you can age. Usually beer is best when fresh, but there are a few that will benefit from some time in the bottle, and this is one of them.”

Another fine regional is Pyramid Snow Cap, an intriguingly robust dark ale that is clean and delightfully balanced, with a nutty, fresh-hop finish.

A different strategy is to search out the distinctive home-grown products at Southern California’s ever-adventurous brew pubs.

Brewski’s in Hermosa Beach put out a pumpkin ale last season. This year, head brewer Bob High has prepared a Holiday Salute, using different spices in different kegs. One might have cinnamon and spruce, another almond and brown sugar.

Even the largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch, wants to join holiday parties; this year it’s introducing Michelob WinterBrew Spiced Ale.

Busch, incidentally, is among the brewers that have learned a lesson about using the word “Christmas.” Its first holiday entry, Christmas Brew, sold slowly after the holidays two years ago and was replaced last year with Anheuser-Busch Special Winter Brew, which consumers could perceive as staying fresh long after Super Bowl Sunday.

WinterBrew is a reddish golden ale that is lightly spiced with nutmeg and citrus pervading the middle palate, with a sweet but rather sudden finish.

Another leading national holiday brand is Coors Winterfest, which is in its 12th year. Having been made as a lager in the past, this year’s Winterfest is a true ale, reddish brown but very light on the palate. It is well balanced, pleasantly malty and on the dry side, finishing with a very mild nose of Czech hops.

Special holiday lagers are less numerous than ales, primarily because lagering is a longer, costlier process. But two made in the Southland are worthy of note: Alpine Village Winter Wonder Beer and Gordon Biersch Winter Bock.

The Biersch bock is almost as black as a porter but very sweet. It is free of heavy maltiness in the mouth, and its hops bouquet is quite subdued, giving it a small nose and a sweet finish.

“We use strictly German malt. Our hops are German and our yeast is German,” says Dan Gordon, head of brewing operations at Biersch, a chain of brew pubs, including one in Old Town Pasadena.

Winter Wonder is a very full-bodied German beer with a strong malty character from an all-grain recipe that uses 85% Munich malt--one which imparts a maltiness that pervades the bouquet.

“It’ll keep you warm over the winter,” promises Branson Burrell, brew master at Southern California Brewing Co. at Alpine Village in Torrance.

With so many products on the market, it might be tempting to dally in shopping for your holiday beers. But note that Busch is flooding the market with six new Michelob craft beers, including WinterBrew, and some of those were on sale recently at Southland discount chains for about $7 a 12-pack. Meanwhile, Anchor Winter Ale and Sierra Nevada Celebration will probably disappear quickly at $7 or $8 a six-pack.

So if you plan to enjoy the best, remember that the season is only too fleeting.