And so this is a beer list — Five holiday brews to get you into the spirit of the season

Last week, for the first time in my life, I bought a whole pomegranate.

My face must have showed immense pride. I would have shared this achievement with the grocer as they typed in the code — 3440.

Alas, I used self-checkout.

The purchase of the pomegranate has been part of a personal challenge to eat more seasonal fruits. Up until late November it had been all apples. Now it’s pomegranates and satsuma mandarins.

Before I continue, this is not a column about healthy snacking; it’s a column about holiday drinking, specifically festive beers.

Around Christmas, you see the market’s gamut, from the bold, timeless, warming ales to the gimmickiest peppermint, eggnog, hot chocolate amalgamations, still loveable amid their shtick.

We eat fruits of the season because they’re the freshest available. Holiday beers are fresh in a different sense: They represent a brewer’s imagination, capturing flavors and feelings of the moment or recalling images, tastes and smells brought forth just this time of year by tradition and nostalgia.

Unlike with wine, I don’t aim to pair these brews with particular foods, though you may find they blend in quite well with your Christmas dinner. I would rather them based on the memories playing anew in my head, even those from far before I could legally drink.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. — 'Celebration'

This roundup has to start with an American classic, a celebration of the hops that helped launch this craft beer thing, and an IPA that, with its ruby red label depicting a cozy, snow-covered log cabin, rings in the holidays.

For 42 years, the pioneering California brewery Sierra Nevada has put out the fresh-hopped “Celebration,” originally named in 1981 not for the holiday season but the September harvest season. The beer stands as the earliest, if not longest-running example of the American-style IPA. No orange juice haze. No mango or melon. Pure pine and caramel malt.

Sierra Nevada uses minimally processed hops — Cascade, Centennial and Chinook — keeping the whole-cone for the brew rather than having them chopped or pelletized

“The whole-cone hop version is not only a nod to traditional beer brewing techniques, but it’s believed that whole-cone hops retain extra intensity and flavor and therefore impart more genuine hop character to the final beer,” communications director Ashlee Mooneyhan told me.

In September, Sierra Nevada’s team of brewers fan out across the Pacific Northwest to gather hops for Celebration and race them back to the brewery as quickly as possible to preserve their freshness.

“Once the hops arrive at the brewery the team gets to work, diligently preparing the special equipment used for dry-hopping this special beer,” Mooneyhan said. “It’s one of the most labor-intensive beers Sierra Nevada makes, and it’s also one of the most anticipated and buzzed about beers each year.”

Double Down Brewing Company — 'Peppermint Bark'

Three Thanksgivings ago, Double Down co-founder Christian McMahan discovered he enjoyed peppermint — as long as it came affixed to chocolate. A guest brought peppermint bark to his house. And the morsels left him awestruck.

“I quickly looked it up and read about the history of it, its creation by Williams-Sonoma and the cult status it had across the US,” McMahan said of the treats. “That Monday I came in with it and had a discussion with our Head Brewer Brian Wells and we agreed ‘we need to figure it out.’”

The “it” that McMahan and Wells figured out ended up being the perfect peppermint-chocolate beer. They found they could brew a stout with layer after layer of dark chocolate and round it off with fresh peppermint.

If you order “Peppermint Bark” at Double Down’s Worcester taproom, attached to Peppercorn’s Grille & Tavern on Park Avenue, you get a glass rimmed with rich chocolate, rolled in crushed peppermint candies.

Redemption Rock Brewing Co. — 'Biere de Fete'

Redemption Rock head brewer Greg Carlson gravitates toward strong, malt-forward beer around the holidays.

Looking for a lager to add to Redemption Rock’s December lineup, Carlson drew inspiration from an ale, Biere de Noel, or Christmas beer. Historically, brewers would release these ahead of the holiday to give their customers something special — boozier or spicier — to relish. Most, though, are ales.

Carlson took the hallmarks of a Christmas ale and used them to shape the recipe for Biere de Fete, creating a malty, alluring lager.

“It's got a real punchy spiced aroma, and rich flavors of dark fruit and toffee. It's got just enough sweetness and strength to satisfy you during the holidays without being overwhelming (because we do not brew beers that are overwhelming),” he said.

The spice blend for Biere de Fete comes from Worcester’s own SpiceNectar, which operates out of the Worcester Food Hub making a small batch, hand-roasted blend of four spices: Ceylon cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and black pepper.

Stone Cow Brewery — 'Winter Wassail'

The dark, spiced Winter Warmer ales can make you wish for a blizzard, so you have a reason to remain inside – perhaps sitting atop a wooden bench in Barre barn — watching snow fall, savoring the stillness.

Stone Cow looked to the ancient English tradition of wassail, a beverage made from hot mulled cider, wine or ale and imbued with spices and shared from household to household. Offering a wassail to your neighbor, Stone Cow co-founder Sean DuBois told me, meant you were bestowing an omen for good harvest, a gesture the farm brewery can certainly respect.

Coming in a gift-worthy glass bottle, Winter Wassail is brewed with cinnamon, ginger and cloves, then aged for a year in American oak whiskey barrels on orange peel, cranberry and honey.

Tröegs Independent Brewing — 'The Mad Elf'

My rundown will end where I typically begin the holiday season: a bottle of Tröegs cherry, honey and spice ale poured into a chalice and drunk while decorating the tree.

I am late to the Mad Elf bandwagon, or I found it just in time. It doesn’t matter, because this beer is meant for reveling, not worrying or fretting.

The Pennsylvania brewer made the first batch of Mad Elf in 2002, and it proved mischievous from the outset.

Founders Chris and John Trogner retired for the night after adding the cherry and honey to the mix, Jeff Herb, Tröegs’ marketing and communications coordinator said. They would return to find about half the batch bubbling down a drain, and the fermentation cellar “covered in a foamy mess.”

“That didn’t deter them, though,” Herb said. “They bottled it, and the rest is history. The Mad Elf is one of the beers that really helped put Tröegs on the map.”

That batch of Mad Elf called for 300 pounds of honey. Now, the recipe calls for 25,000 pounds, collected from the same beekeeper in Carlisle, Penn., along with five varieties of tree-ripened cherries.

The honey and cherries are paired with chocolate malt and a spicy Belgian yeast for the cheeriest beer — and at 11% ABV it will leave you cheery — you’ll find.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Beyond Beer: Five festive beers to help raise your holiday spirits