This year I intend to serve beer on Christmas Day as well as champagne. But not any old beer - this beer has broken the £10 price barrier, retailing as it does at £12.99.

Yes £12.99! - and I have friends who say that it's going for even more than that on ebay. It's the Duvel Triple Hop, a limited edition ale which has an ABV of 9.5 per cent - so it's certainly not a quaffing beer, or a session beer. It's a beer to be sipped, perhaps at the end of the meal, or during the early evening while eating turkey sandwiches and gazing into the fire. Actually, some are calling it a collector's item and suggesting it should not be drunk for several years, for like a good wine, it's thought that this beer will be good for ten or 20 years. So perhaps I should resist opening it or buy more and place it in the cellar alongside the Chateauneuf du Pape for a while?

What makes this beer so special? Apparently, its price tag is justified by the three different hops added at different stages of the brew, each offering different taste experiences, making it a supremely hoppy beer. Master brewer Hedwig Neven explained that to make this beer they selected three particularly prestigious varieties of hops - Saaz, Styrian Golding and Amarillo - adding additional hop cones at a later stage to make the character of the beer very special.

It's high ABV gives it added intensity of flavour and a pervasive zesty bitterness. Then the fact it was produced as a limited edition must be put into the equation - a single hectolitre vessel, which produced 22,000 bottles, makes it a rare comodity and it's therefore valued as such. If you think this seems a lot of bottles, remember that once they are spread around Europe it's not a lot at all. If you can find a bottle in one of the Sainsbury stores stocking it, it might be fun to try one. After all, Christmas is the time to push the boat out and enjoy new taste experiences.

Duvel Triple Hop is not the only limited edition beer available this Christmas. Innis & Gunn Rum Cask finish (7 per cent ABV) is proving particularly popular as it's been matured in oak barrels, which previously contained rum, for more than 100 days to give it a rich, spicy character.

If you are not bothered about limited editions, and are looking for a beer that celebrates the brewer's art, then you can't do better than Kasteel Cru (5.2 per cent ABV), which is brewed from the water from Les Vosges mountains in Alsace and fermented with champagne yeast. It's a crafted lager which combines stength with a lightness of touch and boasts streaming bubbles rising to a sharp, white foam. At just £1.29 a bottle from Waitrose and Thresher, it's worth adding to the shopping basket just in case it would hit the spot on Christmas Day.

Another beer with a luxurious champagne-like mouthfeel that goes with Christmas is Worthington's White Shield IPA (5.6 per cent ABV), which retails at about £2.10p. White Shield is special as it is bottled live and really does go on developing as it matures, which means you can buy some bottles now and lay them down for Christmas 2010. This beer has a very subtle, peppery character which helps create an exquisite bittersweet finish - it also comes with the merest hint of marmalade. Certainly a great beer.

Closer to home we have Wychwood Brewery's Brakspear Triple at 7.2 per cent ABV, which is hopped three times to give flavour, complexity and freshness and, unlike the triple-hopped Duvel, only costs £1.89. This triple-fermented, triple-hopped strong beer, packaged in individually numbered bottles, is a beer that will go on to develop further complexity as it matures in its bottle. So perhaps this should go into the cellar too?

Wychwood's festive brew, Bah Humbug, at £1.59 - if you can find it in the shops - will also make for a perfect festive drink, particularly as it has a billowing, frothy head, remincient of Santa's beard, and the aroma and taste of cinnamon with the merest suggestion of ginger.

I say "if you can find it", as some of some of these beers have taken me days to track down - I finally discovered the Duvel Triple Hop at the Kidlington Sainsbury's, after hunting through several other stores, but Bah Humbug took even longer to hunt down. Wychwood promises that if you can't find Bah Humbug, or any of their other winter beers and festive gift packs in the shops, they have plenty in their brewery store, open weekdays from 9am to 5pm, at Eagle Maltings, The Crofts, in the very heart of Witney. If you can't find the brewery, just follow your nose, as the delicious aroma of roasted malt pervades the air as you approach. You can't miss it once you get the scent.

Wychwood are also brewing Plum Duff for Sainsbury's, at £1.59, which is has plums, old spices and flavourings added to the brew to give it a really rich Christmas pudding taste.

Another delicious Christmas-themed beer is Hook Norton's Twelve Days, at £1.87p, which is a strong, dark brown beer with a dominantly malty palate and nutty overtones, making a fine partner for the cheese board, especially if a dish of walnuts is served alongside it.

Members of Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) suggest that you finish your Christmas meal with a good dark stout or porter as the roast coffee and chocolate flavours are a perfect match with sweet puddings, including the dark after-dinner chocolate mints. Their suggested brew this year is O'Hanlons Port Stout, at £1.87, which has a dark chestnut-brown colour with ruby highlights. The moment you open the bottle, you get mocha and chocolate on the nose, which follow through on the palate. I don't think things can get any better than that.