Black pudding, white pudding and all the medley of sausages, bacon and eggs are happily partnered by a porter or a stout. Stouts were originally called 'stout porters' and have a more roasted finish than their slightly weaker, often chocolaty brethren, but both are a wonderful creamy match for all the rich flavours in this traditional British fry-up.

If smoked salmon is your chosen starter, or prawn cocktail or sweet vegetarian terrines, all these dishes are gentle creatures that benefit from beers which are either gentle or with a lemon edge. Gentle sweet lagers like Sol, Amstel or Grolsch Blond should hit the spot; as will citric pale ales or citric-hopped bitters from a wide range of micro-breweries. If, however, meat pâtés or terrines are your chosen starters, then milds or lighter bodied bitters will do well.

Turkey or goose are soft, easy flavours and great partners for those soft, sweet milds, gentle bitters or indeed for your creamflow beers. Any beer with too much hop power – ie best bitter, old ales or IPAs - would be too big and blow the turkey apart.

Cheese demands bigger flavoured beers and our British bitters win here big-time. The key is to partner the intensity of flavour of the cheese to that of the beer. So a creamy yet chalky Camembert will find its flavours pleasantly stretched by a gently sweet lager; whilst hard cheeses benefit from a hoppy British bitter with a firm malt base like Marston's Pedigree, mature Cheddar with its tangy flavours go with a tangy, hop-rich India Pale Ale; and blue cheeses and Stilton with either an India Pale Ale, or preferably an old ale of 6-8% ABV with rich damson and Christmas pudding flavours like Robinson's Old Tom, Brakspear Triple or Hog's Back's A-over-T.

Christmas Pudding is heaven sent with Guinness or other stouts, the same creamy dry flavours being pleasant in both. But barley wines or old ales are also worth an outing.

This suggestion may be only for the more adventurous, but Danish pastries or chocolate cakes with fruit beers is one of my passions. Served in wine or martini glasses (never in a pedestrian pint of half pint glass) they add theatre to the day. My favourites are raspberry or cherry beer (mostly from Belgium, but Sam Smiths and some micros do them as well) with chocolate pudding, but apricot or passion fruit beer with 'a Danish' is also wonderful and a talking point in the pub. Ideally these bottled beers should be displayed on a bed of ice.

I have been fascinated by beer cocktails since reading beer-mixing recipes acknowledged in a book by Richard Boston entitled 'Beer and Skittles'. This Christmas I hope to see pubs up and down the land publishing tent cards and blackboards with a selection from the following offering:

• Black and Tan: stout and bitter, sometimes stout and mild
• Mother-in-Law: old and bitter
• Boilermaker: brown and mild
• M & B: Mild and bitter
• Narfer Narf: half a pint of mild and half a pint of bitter (half a pint of this is narfer narfer narf!)
• Dragon's Blood: barley wine and rum
• Dog's Nose: bitter and gin
• Lightplater: light and bitter
• Granny: old and mild
• Blacksmith: barley wine and Guinness

Following experimental mixing sessions conducted with Manns Sweet Brown Ale, all 2.8% of under-appreciated chocolatey magic, we also found that Manns (or maybe Mackeson 3% milk stout) blend wondrously with spirits. Manns with a shot of Tia Maria was our overall winner (think cold chocolate, coffee and cream) but other sexy winners were Cointreau or Grand Marnier (which made a grown up version of Terry's chocolate Orange) and, for those who like liquorice, Pernod.

And if you're serving beer cocktails or bottled beers, dispense with your normal glassware and bring theatre to your pub with large wine glasses, Champagne flutes or brandy balloons. Christmas will never be the same again.

Martyn Cornell

Hot spiced ale drinks were popular in the centuries before central heating, when a journey during winter might mean passengers had their horse-drawn coach filled with straw to keep them from freezing, and the inn or household at the end of the trip had to supply something immediately warming for the chilled travellers. Lightly-hopped ales, such as milds and brown ales, are the best kinds of beer to use for these drinks, since hoppy beers are likely to become too bitter when heated to near boiling point.

Ale flip

1 pint/500ml strong ale

2 eggs

3 tablespoons/50gm of sugar

¼ teaspoon of ground nutmeg or ginger

1 tablespoon/20ml of rum or brandy

Put the ale into a 1½-litre saucepan and heat almost to boiling point. Meanwhile, beat the eggs, sugar, spice and spirits together in a 1½-litre  jug before pouring the hot ale into the egg mixture quickly from a great height (to prevent curdling). Rapidly pour the now creamy liquid back and forth from jug to saucepan several times before serving. The result is a smooth, warming, sustaining winter's drink.

Ale berry (or caudle)

2 pints/1 litre boiling water

Three tablespoonfuls of crushed oats

Piece of root ginger approximately 1cm square, grated

2 pints/1 litre just boiling ale

Nutmeg or cinnamon

Tablespoonful/24gm of sugar

Boil the crushed oats in the water until thick, adding grated ginger; strain, still boiling hot, into the just-boiling ale, add a substantial pinch of grated nutmeg or ground cinnamon and the sugar, and drink immediately.

Brown Betty

1 pint/500ml hot water

3 tablespoons/120gm brown sugar

Slice of lemon

3 tablespoons/60ml brandy

Six cloves

½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon

2 pints/1 litre ale

1 slice brown toast

Grated nutmeg

Grated ginger root

Dissolve the sugar in the hot water with the slice of lemon in it. Add the cloves, cinnamon, brandy and strong ale and heat. Pour into a warm bowl, float the toast on top and grate the nutmeg and ginger over the toast. Ladle the spiced ale into glasses while still warm.

(It is from the tradition of floating spiced toast in bowls of drinks such as punch and Brown Betty that we get the expression "to drink a toast".)

Lamb's Wool

1 cooking apple

¼ teaspoon of ground ginger

Dessertspoonful/12gm of sugar

2 pints/1 litre just boiling ale

Core, peel and slice the apple, and heat in a saucepan with a tablespoon of water and the sugar and ginger until cooked to a mush. Heat the ale and pour on to the apple mixture. Serve straight away.

Ale posset

1 slice white bread, cut into cubes

1 pint/500ml milk

1.1 pints/600ml strong ale

Dessertspoonful/12gm of sugar

Grated nutmeg to taste

Put the bread in the milk and bring the milk to the boil. Meanwhile warm (but don't boil) the ale, with the sugar and nutmeg, and put the ale into a bowl. When the milk has boiled, pour it into the bowl with the ale and let it stand a few minutes, while the curd rises to the top: then serve.