Needless to say, I’m a big advocate of beer rather than wine ’round the Thanksgiving dinner table. And I’ve written about it at Thanksgiving time every year the blog’s been around (last year’s post here). And the fact remains, if you want to wax traditional this holiday, than wine has no place at the Thanksgiving feast. The Pilgrims, after all, drank tankards of ale with their meal. It’s even been suggested that the reason the colony ended up where it did was because the Pilgrims had run out of beer and needed to set up shop somewhere quickly so they could begin brewing more. William Bradford, the father of American Thanksgiving, is oft quoted as writing,
“We could not now take much time for further search [for an ideal destination,] our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.”
To that end, the folks at SeriousEats.com have come up with a list of what they believe to be the perfect beers for your Thanksgiving meal this year. While it’s definitely an article worth your time, I’ve personally only had a few of the brews on their list but it sounds like they did pretty extensive research (poor them) to whittle down the list and have very good reasons and explanations for choosing the beers they did. Their recommended Thanksgiving beers:
- Bière de Garde (Southhampton Brewery)
- French Style Country Ale (Two Brothers)
- Ashland Amber (Caldera Brewing)
- Singel Ale (Witkap Pater)
- Kerberos Tripel (Flying Dog)
- 2° Below (New Belgium)
- Frambozen (New Belgium)
- Levitation Ale (Stone Brewing)
Personally, I’ll be choosing a bottle of Allagash Fluxus ’09 to accompany my Thanksgiving feast. The beer having been brewed with black pepper, sweet potatoes, I think it will compliment my meal nicely, provide a little bit of a palate-cleansing bite (from the black pepper) and enough backbone (from the malts and the yams, which add significant body) to stand up to the hearty Thanksgiving dishes. What beers will you be drinking this holiday?
4 Comments
It’s killing me that I didn’t save a bottle of The Bruery’s Autumn Maple for Thanksgiving. It’s the perfect taste for the season. Next year I’m going to load up. This year I think it’ll be a dopplebock of some form or a barley wine. And all the time I’m going to be wishing it was Autumn Maple!
Was the Autumn Maple good? I had the chance to buy a bottle last week when in DC but chose not to because it was wicked expensive and the reviews I read on BA were sub par…
This will be my first Thanksgiving drinking beer, and I haven’t yet found a place with a great selection of craft beer, so do you have any recommendations of something relatively easy to find at a state liquor store?
@blogaboutbeer: The Autumn Maple was exceptional in my opinion, especially when compared to all the pumpkin beers I was trying at the time. It’s made with yams which gives it a wonderful earthy sweetness that isn’t cloying or overblown I just found a few bottles for Thanksgiving and paid $12.99 apiece for 750ml. A little dear, but not extravagant.
It’s going to make the Turkey taste great!