The life of a beer writer can be a lonely one. I know, I know; but before you serenade me with your tiny violins, hear me out. What I mean more specifically is that when you write about beer, and you have a partner who does not drink beer (or much else besides), is not particularly interested in the world of beer writing (who could blame them) and does not consider a weekend spent on trains and buses taking you to large village halls packed with sweaty beer drinkers a weekend well-spent, then you often find yourself on those trains alone. So when my wife, heretofore to be referred to by me in this article as Herself (her request, it’s a Marian Keyes thing…), indicated she might, possibly, be interested in a festive beer and food pairing evening, I took that chink of light and leveraged it for as much as I could.

The pitch was a simple one: with the children spirited away for the night, we would sit down together and drink and eat through a Christmas-themed beer and food pairing menu, and Herself would cast her critical eye over which beer she liked, which she didn’t, and which beers went best with what dishes. Sorting out the beers was the relatively easy part. I’ve written elsewhere (in this month’s edition of Ferment Magazine) about the Belgian Christmas beer tradition, it basically being a wintry, post-WWI offshoot from, and assimilation into Belgian brewing culture, of thick, strong and dark Scotch Ales. Those parameters generally still hold when determining what qualifies as a Christmas beer in 2020. High ABV, usually to the darker end of the colour spectrum, sometimes spiced, and usually with some variation of Christmas/Noël/Kerst inn the name alongside classic Yuletide iconography on the label.

What is a Christmas beer?

Had we attempted a similar tasting in the Brussels of 2015, our choice would have been restricted to one sole beer: Winter Mess from Brasserie de la Senne. But the brewing revival that has taken root in the interim five years has meant there are now more breweries making beer in Brussels, and - more importantly for this little exercise - more breweries making Christmas beers. Or, at least, making winter/end-of-year beers, because we played a little fast and loose with what qualified a beer for our tasting. Surveying what was on offer from brewers in early December, their beers generally fell into several different categories. Alongside Winter Mess there were other, overtly festive beers - The Sour Before Christmas sour IPA by L’Ermitage, and Bûche de Noël chocolate orange Tripel from Arever. Tough Cookie, a pastry stout from Brussels Beer Project brewed with leftover Sinterklaas speculoos cookies from Maison Dandoy, in my mind at least, could still sit alongside these beers given the close cultural connections between Santa and his Low Countries forebear.

After these beers, our (my) rules around what qualified as a Christmas beer bent towards what the market offered. So alongside the above beers came ones brewed with no explicit Christmas connection but more as end-of-year or holiday celebrations: big beers to ring in the New Year. So there was Ours from La Source, their “end-of-year” chocolate imperial stout brewed with Peruvian cacao nibs provided by Brussels chocolatier Nao. Alongside this, and in the same vein, was Brasserie No Science’s limited run edition of their Whack! Imperial Coffee Stout aged for 14 months on used Calvados barrels. And then there was Moose Milk Stout from Brasserie L'Annexe rounding out the selection, brewed in homage - so they said - to the Moose Milk cocktail popular with the Canadian armed forces on New Year’s Day. And that was our seven.

No Christmas Pudding?!

If determining what a Christmas beer looked like was harder than I first imagined, finding a Christmas menu to complement the drinks was even more confusing. Irish Christmas traditions are pretty standard when it comes to food, and are what you might expect from the archipelago of English-speaking islands in the northwestern corner of Europe: mince pies, Christmas cake and pudding, turkey, stuffing, ham, various iterations of potatoes (mashed, roasted, parsley), gravy. In asking around what constituted a Brussels Christmas, it became clear that no such culinary canon existed. For some people, game - rabbit often, sometimes small birds - featured highly, while for others it was all about salmon. Noting Brussels’ long history of migrant communities, people suggested dishes with Spanish, Italian, Moroccan, and French influences, and descended into internecine debates across Brussels Beer City’s social media feeds about whether one person’s cherished Christmas meal really qualified as Bruxellois or not.

Eventually I was able to settle on a couple of common threads that, when meshed with my own particular preferences, left us with the following menu: an amuse bouche of pork and cranberry pate; followed by a starter of Boudin de Noël, blood sausage spiced with calvados and cinnamon and accompanied by cognac-infused apple sauce; then a main of award-winning croquettes both shrimp and cheese; and finishing with a Bûche de Noël from patisserie Maison Zack, a Christmas log made with ganache, passion fruit, strawberries and pistachio.

The Food

Pork and cranberry pâté
Boudin noir with cinnamon and calvados, Boucherie Ma Campagne
Shrimp and cheese croquettes, Delicatessen Fernand Obb
Le Coin Vert Bûche de Noël, Maison Zack

The Beers

From there we were set. The running order was simple:

Try each beer
Judge each beer on its merits
Try each beer with each pairing
And answer three questions: 1): which beer paired best with each dish? 2): what our favourite pairing was? 3): what our favourite beer was

Having put together the food and drinks menu, cycled across town to secure the necessary ingredients, and prepared them in the kitchen - and if only to introduce a voice other than my own on the blog - we thought it might be more interesting to give the floor to Herself to talk through what she thought about it all, and what our final conclusions were. What follows are an abbreviated collection of Herself’s various opinions on the beers and the food as our evening progressed.

The Beers

The following are Herself’s considered opinions on each of the beers we selected.

Tough Cookie: “Reminds me of drinking Becherovka in a weird little bar on a side street in Olomouc - quite herbal.”

Winter Mess: “Comforting, like a warm blanket”

Whack!: “ Smells like a headache…too much alcohol. Not for me.” [edit: we put this one to the side]

Bûche de Noël: “Tastes like Cuberdon…but ultimately disappointing.”

Moose Milk: “Too roasted!”

Ours: “Lots of coffee, lots of chocolate, but a little too much alcohol for me.”

The Sour Before Christmas: “That’s lovely. Very lemony. And I don’t even like IPAs.”

The Pairings

Pork and cranberry pâté (Colruyt own-brand)

“On it’s own the Moose milk is too roasted, but with the beer brings out some creaminess in the pâté…I’m a fan, it’s right in the middle of the other beers. As for the Tough Cookie, the sweetness of the pâté and the herbal beer do not mix; not for me. The Sour Before Christmas has similar acidity to the meat, but isn’t adding anything…a little too grainy in combination. Winter Mess pairing is nice and familiar, but not spectacular”. Choice: L’Annex Moose Milk Stout (“echt goed”), with Winter Mess a close second.

Boudin Noir with cinnamon and calvados (Boucherie Ma Campagne, St Gillis)

“Do I have to drink all the beers?…The Tough Cookie is a lovely play on words but it has to deliver, it’s too weak. The Moose Milk just doesn’t work…Arever’s Bûche de Noël is the best so far, the sweetness and sharpness cuts through the fatty sausage. For me, it’s a toss up between the Winter Mess and the Bûche, and the latter is a bit sweeter, but that’s okay for me.” Choice: Arever Triple Bûche de Noël (“echt lekker”).

Shrimp Croquettes and Cheese Croquettes (Delicatessen Fernand Obb, St Gillis)

“I like the shrimp ones with the IPA (?). Mmmmhhhmmm, that’s lovely…it goes really well with the shrimp. I’m opting out of the dark beers for this one, it would be a waste of the croquettes…The Arever, I could live with that…As for the Winter Mess, I just really like that beer!” Choice: L’Ermitage Sour Before Christmas (“I like the look of the bottle, but they need to work on their puns.”

Le Coin Vert Bûche de Noël (Maison Zack Pâtisserie, Marollen)

[Reader, I should preface this by saying that, when I brought home the bûche and unwrapped it, Herself’s first reaction was: “Disgusting.” However, by the time we reached the dessert course, her opinion had mellowed, and she did enjoy the flavour, if not the look, of the cake.] “Sour Before Christmas is too much of the same citrus flavour…Tough Cookie is again just not strong enough…The Moose is only good for the pâté…and, surprisingly, the Arever doesn’t work with the bûche either.” Choice: “None of them really work, but the bûche is delicious all by itself. Who knew?"

Herself’s favourite beer? “Winter Mess, though I don’t think I picked it with any of the food!”

And her favourite pairing? “Either the L’Annexe Moose Milk Stout with the pâté, or the Sour Before Christmas and the shrimp croquettes.”

I can’t help but abuse my position to have the last word. That we could organise a Christmas beer tasting with beers sourced only from Brussels is a testament to the growth brewing has experienced in Brussels in the last half-decade. In finding my own favourite beer and pairing, like Herself I often stick close to the tried and trusted of de la Senne’s Winter Mess, but I also thoroughly enjoyed (maybe more than I expected) the inappropriately-tart Sour Before Christmas and the peppery, chocolatey luxury of Ours from La Source - though the latter was just a touch too strong and dense for the food we selected. And not being a seafood eater I’d plump for the cheese croquettes-and-Sour pairing as my highlight - the tart lemony zing of the beer doing wonders to cut through the stodge of deep-fried béchamel.

And on that festively indulgent note, that’s all from Brussels Beer City in 2020. Here’s to 2021 - and, brewers be warned, maybe we’ll repeat this exercise next December with a new batch of festive beers!