On 12/12, I opened my fridge to find yet another NEIPA, the 6th in 12 days. Up until that point, I had kept the beers a secret from myself, getting them in the fridge without looking at them, so each day, opening the fridge could be like opening a box on a real advent calendar. But when 50% of the beers are NEIPA, that surprise gets a lot less fun.

It’s appropriate that 12/12’s beer is one from Cushwa called Style Police. Judging by its can art (above), it’s poking fun at people who are overly critical, or maybe people who give beer uninformed ratings on platforms such as Untappd. It offered the perfect beer, then, to start my rebellion against the way too frequent appearance of NEIPA’s in this year’s ChurchKey advent beer box. I’m not offering tasting notes on any more NEIPAs that appear (my notes on the first five are plenty), including today’s Time Bandit from Bluejacket.

I will use those extra days, though, to get caught up on the non-NEIPAs, I’ve missed: Bluejacket’s fruited sour, Schilling’s lager, and Other’s Half’s fruited sour.

My big question though, is this: where are the porters and stouts in this Christmas box? Not a single one so far. The closest we’ve come is the dark lager from Wheatland Spring on 12/7. I’m trying to give ChurchKey the benefit of the doubt, so maybe this is a supply chain issue? Other theories on why this wintery mix is such a juice-fest?