The son of a baker, Paul Hollywood originally trained as a sculptor before his father persuaded him to join the family business. Paul went onto become head baker at some of the most exclusive hotels, including Cliveden, The Chester Grosvenor and The Dorchester, gaining a reputation as an innovator and one of the country’s finest artisan bakers. Since 2010, the English celebrity chef is widely known as a judge on The Great British Bake Off where passionate amateur baking fans compete to be crowned the UK’s Best Amateur Baker. One of Paul’s favorite bake during the holidays is Christmas pudding, which isn’t pudding by the American definition. Instead, it’s more like a dense, steamed fruitcake. Brewers channel the sweet, dried fruit Christmas pudding — also known as figgy pudding or plum pudding — in their holiday offerings. Today, Peaks & Pints presents a holiday flight of beer that resemble Christmas pudding — a flight we’re calling Peaks and Pints 2024 Christmas Beer Flight Dec. 17: Christmas Pudding.

Peaks and Pints 2024 Christmas Beer Flight Dec. 17: Christmas Pudding

Evil Twin Our Most Popular Holiday Beer

8% ABV

Evil Twin Brewing’s Our Most Popular Holiday Beer is a Belgian strong dark ale brewed with cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla. It leads with a nose of fruit and holiday spices followed by brown sugar, toffee, hard candy and light pastry, which morph into Christmas pudding notes of date, raisin, fig, plum, blackberry, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and ginger.

Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo

8% ABV

Yorkshire, England’s oldest brewery, Samuel Smith’s Brewery, founded in 1758 in Tadcaster, is one of the last remaining independent breweries in England. Samuel Smith is the last to utilize the classic Yorkshire Square system of fermentation solely in stone squares. Some of the oak casks at Samuel Smith’s date back more than a century with the individual oak staves being replaced by the old brewery’s coopers over the years. Gradually the casks soak in more and more of the character of the ale fermented in stone Yorkshire squares. Yorkshire Stingo is aged for at least a year, matured in these well-used oak casks in the brewery’s underground cellars deriving fruit, raisin, treacle toffee, Christmas pudding, and slight oaky flavors before being further naturally conditioned in bottle.

Block 15 Ol’ Saint Nick

9% ABV

While St. Nicholas is best known — in America, at least — for wearing red and white and giving presents to Children each Dec. 25, he’s actually the patron saint for several professions, places and afflictions, but especially the patron saint of brewers. Block 15 Brewing’s Ol’ Saint Nick is a generously malt-forward winter warmer brewed with a base of Maris Otter, honey malt, and caramel malt balanced by zesty hop character. Ol’ Saint Nick offers notes of toffee, cocoa, plum, and caramel with citrusy hops and a warm, lingering finish.

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale

10% ABV

Brouwerij St Bernardus is famous for both their beers and their heritage. The brewery brewed the famous Westvleteren beers before the monastery returned all production back to within the abbey’s walls. Their Abt 12 quadrupel represents what Westvleteren 12 used to be before the abbey changed their yeast strain. Abt 12, one of the world’s most beloved and highly regarded beers. St. Bernardus’ Christmas Ale is brewery’s Abt 12 offering, but gussied up with rich malt, dark dried fruit, fig, hints of anise, nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar … basically a fruitcake.

Block 15 Figgy Pudding

11% ABV

Often called “plum pudding” — even though it contains no plums whatsoever — figgy pudding was first recorded as “Christmas Pudding” in 1858 and later popularized in the carol, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Block 15’s English-style barleywine is called Figgy Pudding even though it contains no figgy pudding whatsoever. Who cares. Brewed with black strap molasses, blend of English pale and specialty malts, and an extended maturation in freshly emptied brandy barrels and gentle spicing with Ceylon cinnamon, and nutmeg, this warming holiday beer is a blessing.

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