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December 18, 2017

BeNeLux - Christmas beers from around here

I admit, I don't drink, like ever. To me drinking is a waste, because I don't like any of the drinks and to drink just because it's a social norm, I think it's stupid. I am the single one sober at a party, I would be the designated driver, if I would have a drivers's licence, I am the one drinking Cola when everyone enjoys Cremant. That's who I am.

I'm also the person who buys drinks after their label. So, probably I'm not the right person to write this post, but since I've came up with the idea... and on top of that, the Christmas labels are really inspired.

If you joined the discussion a little bit later, I live in BeNeLux, a very fortunate region when it comes to drinks. We have Belgian beers, we have Luxembourgish wines and we have a lot of duty free shops where we can buy other sorts of drinks. We are also very close to France and Germany so to conclude we have access to a lot of alcoholic beverages.

As you can see I have a great selection of beers from Luxembourg, Belgium and one from France. I did not find a German Christmas beer, but that does not mean it doesn't not exist. What I did and what you can do if you live in Luxembourg or you shop in Luxembourg, I went to the supermarket, the biggest and the most Luxembourgish one and bought all the Christmas beers I could find.
For me Christmas is always white so I was fortunate enough to write this post during a snow and pop outside to take a few pictures. 
I don't know about Luxembourgish beers, but usually Belgian, abbey beers (or Trappist) are associated with abbey cheese. 
Let's start with the Luxembourgish ones, I have here, Diekirch, Bofferding, Simon and Battin, I know for sure that there is also Fox beer, but I did not find their Xmas beer, if they even have one. As I can't actually judge the taste, because they all taste fine to me, I would say that by the labels they are indeed multicultural. If I were to do a little bit of linguistic landscaping, I've noticed that the beers have labels in three languages, English, French and Luxembourgish. Diekirch, Bofferding and Battin have the word "Christmas" wrote as in English, the description in French and some slogans or the logo in Luxembourgish. 
Simon is the only one that doesn't use English on their label, the word for "Christmas" is in French and it is "Noel" and the beer description is also in French. They have something which to me looks like Luxembourgish and I assume is the motto and out of the four Luxembourgish beers only Simon has the crest on the bottle.
Passing to the only French beer I found and I'm not even sure it is a Christmas beer, but I bought it because it has sort of a Christmas label and it is with marrons (chestnuts) which I associate with Christmas. The label is all written in French, (no surprise there) and to me the beer tastes funny, but maybe it's from the chestnuts. It tastes funny, but good. 
I was surprised to find, Belgian Christmas beers,  not because they can't be usually found in Luxembourg, but because I've imagined the Belgians as being serious about their beers and not surrender to this Christmas commercial stuff. But as you can see all these beers are not actually, truly Trappist beers, they are mass produced and I hope I am right, they lost the Trappist qualification if they ever had one. Nonetheless, they are Belgian and they are good and they do have a lot more alcohol than the other ones. As Belgium is a trilingual country, too, their labels are written in the two main languages of the country, which are French and Dutch. The labels have that Christmassy feel and the beer is ok.

And that's about it with my post about Christmas beers from the region. If you found the post interesting please like and share it. You can find me at:  Dichisuri.ro
Raluca

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