For 47 years, every December Anchor Brewery released their Christmas Ale, an annual treat for craft beer drinkers everywhere. This year, with the closing of Anchor Brewery, we no longer will be able to enjoy that great beer. This issue in memory of that great brewery and great beer we will feature Christmas Ales.
A little Christmas Ale History
The founder of Anchor Brewing Fritz Maytag, got a lot of inspiration from English beers. In fact his original focus on Ales and Porters came from his love of a English beer. In 1975 Fritz brewed Liberty Ale for the first time to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride. That summer Fritz took a trip to England to visit some breweries and pubs to get new ideas for beers to brew back home. He came back with two new beer ideas, that would introduce Americans to two new types of beer that had never existed in America. Those beers were Old Foghorn barleywine and Christmas Ale.
Both beers created traditions in craft beer that continue through today. Many English Pubs made a special beer for the Christmas season, often called “Special beer.” Based on this English tradition in November of 1975 Fritz started a new American craft beer tradition and brewed his first Christmas Ale. It was actually a pale ale based on the Liberty Ale recipe and Fritz named it Our Special Ale. They placed an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle about the beer not knowing what to expect, but on the first day of its availability there was a line down the block of people interested in trying this new beer. Fritz was now motivated and each year Fritz tweaked the recipe trying to “perfect” the beer, finally in 1982 he felt he had landed it. He wanted an all malt beer (something unusual in the American beer world of the early 80s) and more of a brown ale. Being a Christmas beer they decided to add some unusual spices and to top it all off they changed the look of the tree on the label. This began the annual tradition at Anchor of changing the Christmas Ale recipe each year and changing the Tree label. The recipe and label design was led by Fritz every year, and he was the final arbitrator of the final taste and look of the beer. Obviously this was something he was quite passionate about and proud of.
So that is how Christmas Ale was born into the craft beer industry. For years Fritz Maytag and Anchor was the only brewery that made a Christmas Ale.
In 1988 little craft brewpub in Cleveland called Great Lakes Brewery opened its doors. It was the first craft brewery in Ohio and built a passionate following in its first few years. Then in 1991 owners and brothers, Pat and Dan Conway hired their first professionally trained brewer, Dennis Holland.
Holland along with being a technical trained brewer was a total craft beer nerd who often took trips to the West Coast to sample the beers of the many craft breweries out there. In 1991 he brought back Anchors Christmas Ale which inspired him to begin tinkering with his own Christmas Ale recipe. In summer of 1992 he created a recipe with all natural honey, ginger and cinnamon sticks to an amber based ale. When Holland and the two Conway Brothers took their first sips out of the fermenting tanks they knew they had something special and immediately tapped it in their brewpub for the 1992 Holiday season. The brewpub patrons could not get enough. Today Great Lakes Christmas Ale has almost a mystical quality and is considered the best of this beer style. Our Christmas beer reviews are coming in a few weeks.
I’ve Included in this issue a film my son and I made 13 years ago at the original Tribes Ale House. It was a Holiday Beer Contest where two breweries, Founders and Bells went head to head with 7 different beers. It’s 13 minutes but quite entertaining and it might get into the Holiday spirit.
Cheers and Merry Christmas to All.
Dan Taylor Sr and Dan Taylor Jr.
Great article! Anchor will be missed!