Jólaöl

Christmas beer

Jólaöl , Christmas beer, is also an integral part of Icelandic Christmas. Traditionally it is a mixture of malt beer with Appelsín, a very sweet tasting orange lemonade . In Iceland you can also buy many different types of Christmas beers, which basically consist of a mixture of malt beer and orange soda and are flavored with numerous spices and other flavors such as licorice flavor.

Of course you can also prepare your own Christmas beer. However, opinions differ when it comes to the mixing ratio :

Malt beer and Appelsín are usually mixed in a ratio of 1:1, but variants such as 45% malt beer, 45% Appelsín and 10% cola or a can of Appelsín, 1.5 cans of malt beer and 1/2 can of light beer are also popular. Sometimes hvítöl is used instead of malt beer and mixed with Appelsín, a classic Danish light beer with an alcohol content of around 2.5% and a high sugar content.

In this Christmas beer recipe, I enriched the traditional mixture of malt beer and Appelsín with ground spices and honey.

Ingredients

500 ml malt beer

500 ml orange lemonade

2 Tbsp honey

1 pinch of pepper

1/2 tsp ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cloves

Preparation

Pour the malt beer into a pot.

Add honey, pepper, ginger, cinnamon and cloves and slowly bring the whole thing to the boil and let it steep for about 15 to 30 minutes.

Then let the mixture cool down.

Mix with the chilled orange lemonade.

In this sense then: Gleðileg jól!

Merry Christmas already!

[Translated from here.]