On December 6 each year — St. Nicholas Day — the brewers at Schloss Eggenberg in Vorchdorf, Upper Austria, begin a batch of Samichlaus. The beer will not be released for ten months. What emerges after that period is a Doppelbock at 14% ABV or above: deep amber to mahogany in colour, with an intensity of malt density, dried fruit, and sherry-like depth that places it in a category almost entirely its own. There are stronger beers in the world, but very few that achieve this strength through the discipline of a single annual brew date and a ten-month aging process. If you are Austrian and living in Tokyo, the Samichlaus is the beer that requires the most explanation and rewards it the most fully — a bottle that carries its own calendar.
Brewed once a year, aged ten months
Samichlaus was originally developed in 1979 by Hürlimann brewery in Zurich, Switzerland, where it held recognition as one of the world’s strongest lagers. When Hürlimann ceased production, the recipe was acquired and transferred in 1996 to Schloss Eggenberg in Vorchdorf, Upper Austria, where it has been produced annually ever since. Schloss Eggenberg is the brewery responsible for all current Samichlaus production, and the Upper Austrian origin gives the beer its current home and identity.
The style is a Doppelbock — or strong lager, with both Helles (pale) and Schwarz (dark) variants in the range. The 2023 vintage available here is deep amber to mahogany, and the flavour profile reflects the ten-month aging process in every dimension: intense malt density that a standard lager cannot approach, dried fruit — fig, raisin, dark plum — a sherry-like oxidative depth from the long conditioning, and a warming finish from the 14% ABV that arrives as a long, slow heat rather than a sharp impact. This is a beer that changes in the glass as it warms from cellar temperature, the complexity deepening as the sherry and fruit notes open. It requires a wide-mouthed goblet and time — not a lot of time, but more than most beers ask for.
How Samichlaus Long-aged Beer – is drunk at home
Prost! (PROAST) — the Austrian toast, direct and communal. In Tyrolean dialect, Auf di! is the warmer variant, though for a beer named for St. Nicholas and brewed on his feast day, Prost carries the appropriate weight. A beer at 14% ABV slows the pace of the toast naturally — this is not a round to rush.
In Austria, the Samichlaus belongs to the Christkindlmarkt season — the weeks of late November through December when Christmas markets fill with Glühwein and mulled spice, and the evenings call for something warming. It is the bottle that appears at the end of a market evening, indoors, when the Glühwein has done its initial work and something more considered takes over. Sachertorte — Vienna’s chocolate cake with its apricot jam and dark chocolate glaze — is one of the few Austrian foods with the depth to meet the Samichlaus: the dried fruit character of the beer and the apricot layer of the cake arrive at the same place through different routes, and the sherry-like depth of the beer gives the chocolate glaze something to work against. Kaiserschmarrn, the torn sweet pancake with stewed fruit, follows the same fruit logic more informally. Wiener Schnitzel belongs to an earlier and lighter part of the meal; the Samichlaus arrives when the evening has settled into itself.
How to drink it in Japan
The Samichlaus is a December beer in Japan, almost without qualification. The 2023 vintage, brewed on December 6 of that year and aged for ten months before release, arrives in Japan carrying the calendar of its production — a beer with a specific birth date and a specific window of appreciation. The Austrian community in Tokyo, though small, gathers around the dates that give the year its structure, and St. Nicholas Day on December 6 is precisely the occasion that a bottle brewed on that date was made for.
At Lawson, try it alongside a dark chocolate bar at 72% cacao or above — the bitterness of the chocolate and the sherry-like depth of the Samichlaus find each other in the same way Sachertorte does, the dried fruit in the beer amplifying the cocoa without either element becoming indistinct. For a composed pairing at home, serve it in small pours alongside a Japanese cheese selection — aged gouda or a semi-hard domestic cheese — where the salt and the nutty depth of the aged dairy respond to the malt density of the Samichlaus with the kind of precision that a wine-and-cheese pairing achieves. The Samichlaus is, in its intensity and its aging logic, closer to wine than most beers allow themselves to be.
At Tokyo’s specialty import shops, a 330ml bottle of the Samichlaus is rare and, when available, reflects the difficulty of sourcing a beer produced in a single annual batch. By the case from Omori Mart — 330ml × 24 bottles of the 2023 vintage — the per-bottle cost is accessible for a beer of this complexity and provenance, and the case provides enough for a December season of deliberate, small-pour occasions.
Get Samichlaus Long-aged Beer – delivered in Japan
Samichlaus Long-aged Beer – is available from Omori Mart in a 330ml × 24 bottle case (2023 vintage), delivered nationwide across Japan.
- Free shipping on orders over ¥15,000
- Pay at FamilyMart, 7-Eleven, or Lawson — or by bank transfer or card
- Nationwide delivery to any address in Japan
Rakuten and Amazon Japan do not carry this label. Omori Mart is where Austrians in Japan find the beers that carry a date on the bottle and mean it.
[Shop Samichlaus Long-aged Beer →]
https://omorimart.com/product/samichlaus-2023-vintage-long-aged-beer-330ml-pack-of-24/
Prost at Schloss Eggenberg on December 6, when the annual brew begins and the ten months of waiting start, and kanpai at a Tokyo table the following December — deep amber, 14%, and a calendar’s worth of patience in every pour.
No products in the cart.