Alpine Terror

THE LEGEND

On the nights before the Feast of St. Nicholas, in the villages of Austria, Bavaria, and the Alpine Tyrol, something else walks alongside the gift-giving saint. It is tall and hunched, crowned with gnarled horns, draped in matted fur, its face a carved wooden nightmare with a lolling tongue. Chains drag behind it, rattling against cobblestone. In one clawed hand it carries a bundle of birch rods called the ruten. In the other, a basket large enough for a child. This is Krampus, the shadow of St. Nicholas, and he has come for the ones who misbehaved.

Where Nicholas rewards the good with gifts and sweets, Krampus punishes the wicked. He swats with birch branches, rattles his chains, and in the oldest versions of the tradition, stuffs naughty children into his basket and drags them to the underworld. The duality is essential. Goodness means nothing without consequence. The gift means nothing without the threat. In Alpine Catholic folklore, Krampus is not an aberration. He is the necessary counterpart, the teeth behind the saint’s smile.

The Krampuslauf, the Krampus run, survives to this day. On the evening of December 5th, Krampusnacht, young men don hand-carved masks and fur suits and charge through village streets with cowbells and torches, terrifying onlookers and dragging chains through the snow. It is one of the oldest continuously practiced folk traditions in Europe, a living reminder that the Alpine winter is not gentle and neither are its spirits.

Alpine Terror is Krampus in a glass. A Black Lager at 5.2% ABV, it is dark as the beast’s matted fur but drinks with the clean, cold crispness of December mountain air. Light roast and caramel give way to dark dates, sweet and menacing in equal measure. It looks like something to fear. It finishes like something you cannot stop reaching for. The birch rods are raised, and you lean in anyway.