Straffe Hendrik Xmas Blend

Review Date 12/25/2024 By John Staradumsky

  Style: Abbey Quad   Brewery: De Halve Maan   Country: Belgium   State: N/A   $ Per OZ: $.66 (B)   ABV: 11%

So this happened to me, I was shopping for beer (imagine that!), but not just any beer, Christmas beer! That’s right, it was the Sunday before Thanksgiving, you see, and I was at Total Wine, shopping for beer. One of the beers I snapped up was Straffe Hendrick Xmas Blend from De Halve Maan (The Half Moon) brewery.

As it so happens, I have never had a beer from De Halve Maan brewery before. This I find rather puzzling, because as you can see, I have a Straffe Hendrik glass and what’s more, a 750ML bottle of Straffe Hendrik in my beer cabinet. Then too, this is really a beer I have been aware of for decades, so I really have no excuse for not having it before. I will therefore bump my bottle up in my on deck circle, and serve some fitting penance for my transgression after I drink it. More to come on that, but for now, we will chalk it up to so many beers, so little time.

From the back bottle label of my Straffe Hendrik Xmas Blend:

The De Halve Maan brewery is located in the heart of Bruges, and is widely known for its highly acclaimed Straffe Hendrik Quadrupel. A very limited selection of the Quadrupel production is barrel aged each year in the medieval cellars of the brewery. For this special Xmas blend, the barrel selection is determined by De Halve Maan’s brewmasters, combining Bordeaux, Calvados and Rum barrel aged Quadrupel with young Quadrupel. This special blend is then refermented in the bottle, allowing for even more complexity, fine effervescence, and an extended shelf life-this special beer will age nicely for up to 5 years.

And that’s where thing get interesting, because, well, I didn’t age this beer. It is indeed the 2022 bottling friends, but it was the 2022 bottling when I bought it at Total Wine in 2024. So there you go. Already aged about two of those five years.

Straffe Hendrick Xmas Blend has an alcohol content of 11% by volume and I paid $16.99 for my 750ML bottle. It is marked Best Before 17/08/2025 at 16:18. At 16:19 on that day it turns into a pumpkin ale.

Straffe Hendrick Xmas Blend pours to a dark black color with a thick creamy tan head and a nose of black cherries, almond and oak. Taking a sip, the beer is full in body, luxuriant as it flows over the tongue. Dark ripe fruit is abundant, the black cherry the nose promised but figs and raisins, too. It’s woody with oak (quite so), hints at sherry, and finishes warm and dry with alcohol.

Delightful indeed and a beer to linger over as I did. Just for fun, and because I'm a weirdo, I saved a bit of my Straffe Hendrik Xmas Blend and mixed with an equal portion of Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. The dark fruit and woody notes of the former are just sublime with the dark chocolate and roast of the latter. I love mixing BBCS with fruited beers, and had great success doing this with Kasteel Rouge in the past.

Glad I tried it?  T

Would I rebuy it??