Holiday Gift Guide: Raise a Glass to Lower Alabama’s Craft Beer Scene

Christmas shopping for the beer lover on your list does not require a trek to a big-box store. Around Mobile and Baldwin County, the local taprooms have made themselves one-stop shops for holiday giving, with seasonal brews, merchandise and gift cards that go over just as well as anything wrapped under the tree.

Local craft breweries have become gathering places as much as manufacturers over the past decade, and their taprooms now double as retail storefronts stocked with exactly the kind of gifts that feel personal without requiring a shopping-mall expedition. A six-pack of something brewed within sight of Mobile Bay says more than a mass-market gift set, and the people brewing it are usually behind the bar to talk about it.

Local breweries lead the list

Downtown Mobile’s Serda Brewing ran a “Cans for Christmas” sale through the holidays: $20 bought a full case of Serda beer, mixed and matched across six-pack styles, available at the taproom only. The deal made Serda’s taproom a practical first stop for shoppers crossing several names off a list at once — a full case for the price of a single six-pack elsewhere.

Growlers from Serda or any of the area’s other breweries make an easy fill-and-gift option, and grocery stores around the region — including Piggly Wiggly and Whole Foods — now pour growler fills as well. The 64-ounce jug, etched with a brewery’s logo and capped with fresh beer, has become the craft beer equivalent of a bottle of wine at a dinner party: cheap enough to be casual, personal enough to feel considered.

Across the bay, Fairhope Brewing Company poured two holiday-themed beers both on tap and to-go in crowlers: the There’s Something About Merry imperial stout and a gingerbread stout. The brewery also stocked special “Hoppy Holidays” T-shirts in its taproom. Crowlers — cans sealed on demand at the taproom counter — solve the growler’s one weakness, keeping beer fresh for weeks instead of days, which makes them the safer choice for a gift that won’t be opened immediately.

Shoppers building a themed basket can round it out with gear from other Lower Alabama favorites including Haint Blue Brewing and Big Beach Brewing, all of which sell T-shirts, hats, pint glasses and gift cards. Gift cards carry a particular advantage for the brewery lover: they double as an invitation to visit, converting a gift into an afternoon at the taproom with the friend or family member who gave it.

The spread of breweries across Mobile and Baldwin County is itself a recent story. Alabama’s brewing laws, loosened over the past decade to allow taprooms and stronger beers, seeded a local industry that barely existed a generation ago, and the holiday marketplace it has created — seasonal releases, merchandise, growler fills at grocery counters — is the visible result of that growth.

Building a basket around a local brewery also supports the state’s young beer economy at the moment when taprooms need it most. Winter is when brewery traffic dips after the tourist season along the Gulf Coast, and holiday merchandise sales — cans, crowlers, shirts and glasses — carry small breweries through the slow months and into spring release season.

Beyond the six-pack

National seasonal lineups fill out the cooler nicely. Boston Beer Co.’s winter range includes its White Christmas white ale alongside a holiday porter, chocolate bock, malty winter lager and Old Fezziwig Ale; Sam Adams’ seasonal variety pack also earned a nod when Sam ’76 was named one of Wine Enthusiast’s 25 best beers of 2018. Winter seasonals from the big craft houses are reliably on shelves through the holidays, and variety packs let a recipient sample a range without committing to a full case of any one style.

The winter seasonal shelf has become one of the most competitive spaces in American beer, with national brewers rotating limited releases each year the way coffee roasters rotate holiday blends. For gift shoppers, the advantage is availability: national seasonals sit in grocery coolers and bottle shops across Mobile and Baldwin County, reachable on the same trip as the groceries — no taproom hours required.

Abita Brewing Co. in Louisiana brought back its dark Christmas Ale, while Texas’ Community Beer Co. offered a Snickerdoodle Ale flavored with cinnamon and vanilla. The Gulf South’s regional breweries treat the holidays as a showcase for richer styles — stouts, porters and spiced ales that suit cold-weather drinking, even along a coast where December rarely requires a fire.

Regional beers also carry a geographic sentiment that out-of-state labels can’t. An Abita Christmas Ale in a Mobile stocking is a Gulf South bottle through and through, and fans of the region’s breweries often trade them the way other parts of the country trade hometown wines — a taste of a place, sent or carried to someone who moved away.

For a gift that lasts past New Year’s Day, subscription clubs deliver monthly. The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club runs five membership levels from $43 to $53 per month, and The Original Craft Beer Club, which focuses on small independent brewers, runs $42 per month. Beer-themed apparel subscriptions such as Shirts on Tap send a different craft brewery shirt each month for $18. Subscriptions solve the “gift that keeps giving” problem literally — a dozen deliveries of fresh beer or taproom tees arriving through the year, each one a reminder of the giver.

Clubs work for different kinds of recipients. A monthly beer shipment suits the drinker who loves variety and tracking down bottles that never reach Alabama shelves; a shirt subscription suits the taproom regular whose closet is already a catalog of brewery logos. Matching the subscription to the person matters more than the price gap between them.

The taproom itself has become part of the gift. Breweries along the Gulf Coast schedule holiday markets, ugly-sweater nights and anniversary parties through December, turning a shopping errand into an outing. Buying at the source means the beer was poured or canned yards from where it was brewed, the merchandise is the freshest stock, and the staff can steer a shopper toward the style that matches the person on their list — advice no big-box aisle provides.

Whether it is a crowler of gingerbread stout or a case of locally canned Christmas ale, the simplest gift on the list may also be the best: beer brewed right down the road. The taprooms around Mobile Bay have spent the year brewing for their neighbors; the holidays are when those neighbors return the favor.

For shoppers new to the beer-gift aisle, a little style knowledge goes a long way. Imperial stouts like Fairhope’s There’s Something About Merry are big, dark and rich, brewed with more malt for higher strength — the kind of beer that pours like motor oil and suits a fire and a glass on a cold night. Gingerbread and spiced ales lean on holiday baking flavors, cinnamon and vanilla and molasses, and they pair naturally with dessert. White ales like White Christmas are the opposite: wheat-based, lightly spiced with orange peel and coriander, drinkable long before dinner is on the table.

That range is why the case sale and the variety pack have become the workhorses of holiday beer shopping. Nobody wants to guess wrong about someone else’s taste, and a mixed case from a local brewery covers light and dark, hoppy and malty, in a single purchase. The six-pack format that dominates American beer shelves was practically designed for gifting — portable, presentable and priced between a card and a big-ticket present.

Timing matters, too. Seasonal releases are brewed in limited runs, and the most anticipated winter beers can disappear from shelves before Christmas week arrives. Shoppers who wait until the last weekend risk choosing from the leftovers; brewery taprooms typically hold their seasonal stock longer than grocery shelves do, one more reason the tour of local taprooms pays off.

Alabama’s drinking laws shape what can be given as well. Beer sold in the state is capped at a strength that rules out some of the biggest imperial styles brewed elsewhere, which is part of why local breweries’ winter releases — and the state’s craft scene generally — have developed their own character rather than mirroring national trends. Growler and crowler fills operate under the same framework, and shoppers should remember that a filled growler is perishable: a beer meant for New Year’s Eve should be bought close to the date and kept cold.

The last consideration is the simplest one. Beer gifts are consumable, which makes them low-risk for the recipient — nothing to store, return or regift. A case of good local beer rarely lasts past the season, and that is precisely the point: it is a gift meant to be shared, opened and talked about, ideally with the person who gave it sitting on the next stool.