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Beers to Drink on New Year’s Eve
Instead of drinking cheap champagne this year or attempting to decipher what champagne has a good “price point” as they more often say in the over priced beverage industries, I plan to explore some equally bubbly and celebratory beers. You can even find beers brewed using the same ancient process used to make champagne called the methode champenoise. While this process has been perfected over the years by champagne producers who were attempting to get a higher carbonation level with smaller bubbles that create a softer velvety mouthfeel, brewers are using it now as well.
To create exceptionally bubbly beers, brewers add sugar to each bottle before it is corked to allow for a secondary fermentation in the bottle. This fermentation infuses more refined smaller CO2 bubbles - the more heavy handed you are with the sugar, the more bubbly the beverage will be. The methode champenoise uses several more complicated techniques like riddling and uses specific types of yeast strains, but for the purposes of beer, you will find many bottle-conditioned beers that achieve the same mouthfeel and complex taste.
These sparkling beers tend to be on the top shelf and are appropriate for a celebration like New Year’s Eve. They also happen to cost about as much as a bottle of cheap champagne… so what do you have to lose? Below are a couple bubbly beers I will be popping open come New Year’s Eve.
Glazen Toren Jan De Lichte This is one of my favorites coming from a brewery in Belgium run by three people. It is an extremely carbonated double wheat beer with some amazing complexity.
AleSmith IPA I just tried their most recent batch which has extremely high levels of carbonation and this is currently one of my favorite big IPAs.
Beers brewed using the methode champenoise:
