Our Theakston Christmas Ale owes its origins to a rather curious event that took place in December 2011. Out of the blue, we had an inquiry from one of the many Theakston enthusiasts in the USA who wrote asking for details of a beer called Theakston Christmas Ale. We were puzzled as, at the time, there was no such thing. Further inquiries revealed that a reference to this beer had been made in the Christmas episode of a nationally broadcast US TV series called NCIS. In the closing sequence, the manager of the NCIS team was seen hammering a wooden tap into a wooden firkin and stating, “This is Theakstons Christmas Ale; it has been flown in all the way from Yorkshire in England where they have been brewing beer like this since Charles Dickens time.” And with that the programme ends with scenes of members of the team happily clinking glasses of the ale to a back drop of the famous Christmas song ‘Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!’