Anyway, the main thing I use to determine if a beer in “wintry” is whether or not I would want to drink it on cold evening while sitting next to the fireplace and watching the snow fall outside.

To be more precise, I see “wintry beers” as beers that have a large malt profile, have a caramel/candy/fruit sweetness and leave an alcohol warmth. Most winter warmers fit this category, as do many stouts, porters and old ales.

Releasing a beer in December doesn’t automatically make it feel wintry. Rogue’s ale for example didn’t feel wintry at all. It tasted like a typical big NW red. It was still a good beer, but one I’d rather drink while at the lake in the summer than while relaxing after putting up the Christmas tree.

Some classic examples of beers that feel wintry to me are:

Anchor’s Our Special Ale – Maybe the closest thing to Christmas in a glass.

Deschute’s Jubelale – My favorite example of a NW take on a winter warmer. Fruit-sweet with a hoppy finish.

Fuller’s Old Winter Ale – The first thing that came to mind when you said “classic examples.”

Sierra Nevada’s Celebration Ale – This is a great example of a non winter warmer beer that still feels wintry. It is an IPA built on top of a sweet, malty body.

I had some much longer reasons why I chose those perticular beers when I wrote this the first time, but I hope that expalins things well enough.

Cheers!
Kevin

I guess I deal with numbers too much. Your analysis seems spot on to me, not funny at all.

I don’t know that the sample size was unreliable. I think that the reliability of the sample depends of the goal of the experiment.

I was attempting to give a run down of some of the commonly available winter ales the impressions of two people who usually have quite different beer preferences. What I thought was interesting was that if you look at the top five vs the bottom four of our lists, the choices are identical. While our rankings are a little different, we generally applauded and panned the same ales.

Cheers!
Kevin