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When you buy a bottle of Celebrator Doppelbock, it comes with a white plastic goat ornament hanging around the neck. (Because, as we all know, bock is German for “goat.”) I used to keep all my plastic goats, and had quite a few of them, but for some reason or another I tossed ’em a few years ago. Which was just plain stupid. This time around I’m going to keep collecting ’em until I get enough to decorate an entire Christmas tree with little plastic goats that say “CELEBRATOR” on every damn one. Assuming Ma and Slick were to someday buy a frickin’ tree …

Celebrator comes from Ayinger, a brewery located in the village of Aying, about ten miles south of Munich at the foot of the Alps. The brewery was founded in 1878 (which is pretty young, for German beer standards) by the Inselkammer family, which still owns and operates it, six generations in. And Celebrator is without a doubt their most famous beer.

The pour is deep amber out of the bottle, sitting a dark, mostly opaque sepia in the glass. The head is big, tan, and frothy, and sticks around in some way, shape, or form for the entire mugful. Unsurprisingly for a German-bred brew, not a hint of lacing can be found clinging to the sides of the glass.

The nose isn’t big—I have to stick my beak in there to get any of it—but it is definitely, without a doubt, malt: wafts of grainy goodness with background flickers of chocolate. And what you smell is what you get, in terms of taste: a beautiful weave of pure barley maltiness amid strands of sweet chocolate and smooth coffee. The finish has a tiny bit of bitterness to it, drying things out just enough to keep the finish from going bonkers. Even so, the finish is nice and long, yet clean and pleasant.

Ayinger Celebrator is probably the quintessential doppel—if you were to put together a beer dictionary, you might as well slap a picture of a bottle of Celebrator (plastic goat and all) next to the entry for doppelbock. The only thing un-doppelbock about it is its ABV: 6.7 percent. Pretty low for a doppel, especially considering a lot of plain ol’ bocks and maibocks get up over 6. But that just means you’ll be able enjoy that much more of this beer at a sitting.

Reviewed by Eddie Glick on February 18, 2010.

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