CulturAle Press

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS #7:  Mikkeller Lovin’ Christmas,  brewed at De Proef Brewery, Lo Christi-Hufte, Belgium

Date:  December 31, 2018

The Story—  We’re presenting our list of 12 great beers for the season.   Some are relatively easy to find, others are from our archives and beer vault.   Follow these posts for other beers in the series:   first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth,

Dirk Naudts and his wife Saskia Waerniers established De Proef Brewery in 1996.  From the beginning the idea was to produce some of their own beers, but also to produce beers on demand for those who were trying to get breweries started and for beer parlors that wanted their own distinctive house beers.   It was a brilliant idea — they created a state of the art brewery and in only a few years produced literally hundreds of unique beers.   Tim Webb, author of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide to Belgium, the only author to rival the beer author Michael Jackson’s understanding of Belgian Beers, essentially threw up his hands because so many of the beers were so good.   To catalog them all would be a separate guide.

When they started it was pretty easy to walk in with an idea and leave with an agreement to brew it.  Not so much now.   De Proef gained world-wide fame for a number of its products, but more than any, it’s work with the Danish teacher turned gypsy brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø, creator of Mikkeller beers.   De Proef’s production of Mikkeller beers made Mikkel rich enough to buy his own brewery in California, but also created demand for their services that outstripped their ability to meet.   So today, you had better bring a good reputation to the collaboration and you’d better be prepared to pay well for the services of the exceptional “rental brewery.”

Mikkel has produced something around 2,000 beers in his wanderings — you can taste hundreds of them in his bars in Copenhagen, but he seem to hit his stride best during the holiday season.   His beers are rich, big and boozy and adventurous.   Like most of his beers the one we’ve chosen from our archives was a one-off, we believe.   But you can certainly find something as interesting lingering on the shelves of good beer stores.   There’s a good chance what you find will have come from the new San Francisco brewery (actually it’s not that new — it’s the original AleSmith brewery), but there are still plenty of De Proef versions around as well.   For a review of a Mikkeller beer from their US brewery, click here.

The Beer—  Especially in 2012, this was an audaciously  hopped IPA, but ginger & pine defuse the managed to citrus. A  firm pale malt almost stands up to it.  A sipper for sure, though it’s 7.8% ABV is pretty modest by holiday standards.

Value —  Good.  It was close to $14, but it came in a 75 cl bottle.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

It’s The Season!!   Through January 6th (Twelfth Night) we’ll give your this year’s list of the Twelve Beers of Christmas.  We’ve tasted close to 200 beers brewed for the season; they’re not all good elves, but a great many are as talented as Rudolph for getting us through a foggy winter’s night.

We know, we promised a count down to the New Year with descriptions of some of our favorite beers from the last five years.   In those years we’ve published Drinking in the Culture, and gotten a good start on a drinking/sleeping guide to the Mid Atlantic and a guide to great beers is supposed “bad beer cities” — the tourist meccas of Europe. But goodness, Grinch, what about all the holiday beers??  So we’ll detour and pick up the top ten list in the new year.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is iour response to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”