I'm gearing up for an annual beer tradition with some friends. Every year we go out and buy 24 cases of beer, 24 different Christmas beers. We used to have to drive all over, which made for some fun nights out, but these days we can do one-stop shopping at a small but growing number of places; if you're lucky, you have a store like this near you.

 

Sometimes we get a buddy to ship us a case of something that never makes it to our little corner of Beer World here in Pennsylvania: Deschutes Jubelale from Oregon, Geary's Hampshire Ale from Maine, Two Brothers Iditarod Imperial Stout from Illinois. I wind up with 24 cases of beer in my walk-in refrigerator (that's my garage between November 15 and April 1), and every night I go out and look at it, rub my hands, and twitch a bit.

 

Sometime in the week before Christmas, when nobody's really doing anything at work, we get together to "Do The Mix." I throw the 24 cases in the van and drive down to the Grey Lodge Pub in Philly, where the owner lets us take over the back of the bar for about an hour. Then, with a lot of beer, sweat and cussing, we tear down those 24 cases and build up 24 new ones with one bottle each of the different beers.

 

I print off a cheat sheet of tasting notes (or pure bullshit if I haven't tasted them yet) for each case and everyone takes their cases home. It's a great chance to taste a lot of different beers, and a great excuse to take an afternoon off work and spend it in the company of friends with similarly skewed priorities.

 

Why do we go through all this work? Why do I hang almost a thousand bucks out there on my credit card buying beer? Why do we all get so excited? Christmas beers! Oh, no, wait, sorry ... we don't call them that anymore, and not because we work for Wal-Mart; we don't even call them holiday beers anymore. They're winter beers, because retailers have discovered that sales of "holiday beers" end on January 2, no matter how good they are.

 

Can't really call them Christmas beers anymore anyway, since Shmaltz Brewing came out with their excellent Hanukkah beer, He'Brew Jewbelation. And some brewers are either painfully multi-culti or playfully pagan, to judge by the number of "winter solstice" beers.

 

The winter beers represent a playful time of year for brewers. Brewing is like a yearlong clock, with midnight at New Year's. Starting in February, we work through a morning of seriously crafted German styles, double bock, bock, Maibock. The summer's wheat and fruit beers fill a long afternoon, then we slide into dinnertime with Oktoberfest, possibly the best beer for food. After dinner, and maybe a couple double IPAs for dessert, it's time to light up some cigars, shoo the women out of the room, and tell a few jokes and stories. That's when brewers roll out the fun stuff: spiced beers, big beers, beers that are out of character for the brewery.

 

These beers traditionally represent a "thank you" from the brewery to the customer. The oldest annually brewed holiday beer in America is Anchor's boldly spiced Our Special Ale, a beer that is spiced differently every year with heavy flavors on a base ale that is the dark garnet of slightly abused transmission fluid.

 

Once I got the chance to ask Anchor owner Fritz Maytag about how the tradition started. "I liked the idea of an ale brewed for a festival," Fritz said simply. "We're not taking advantage of the season, we're celebrating it. I was adamant that it say 'Merry Christmas' on the label. I called it a gift to our customers, not to make a profit. It has become profitable, but it wasn't for years."

 

What can you expect? There are a couple of categories these beers fall into. Spiced ales are popular this time of year, a throwback to centuries-old traditions of mulled ale. Ale was warmed with a red-hot poker – "mulled" – and doctored up with spices, sugar, eggs, fruit, bread crumbs and whatever else got close to the mixing cup. The concoctions sported names like Flip, Lamb's Wool, Yard of Flannel and Whistle-belly Vengeance.

 

Nowadays, these beers' descendants are spiced at the brewery, and bear more sensible monickers, like Anchor's Our Special Ale mentioned above, and Harpoon Winter Warmer, a favorite in New England. They may bear a literary name, like Boston Beer Co.'s popular Old Fezziwig, named for a character in the Charles Dickens story "A Christmas Carol." The spices used will range from vanilla to dried orange peel, with all the usual holiday baking spices in between: cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger and so on.

 

Another popular category with both brewers and drinkers is one I call the "Ever So Much More So" beers – where breweries take their regular flagship beer and crank up the volume. Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale is one of the oldest and best examples of such a beer; the brewery's Pale Ale gets juiced to a whizzing wonder of hops and power. Another well-known one is the imported Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome, a beefier, ballsier version of Samuel Smith's Pale Ale.

 

Even the big guys are getting into the act. Miller released 1855 Celebration Lager this year (to less-than-rave reviews). Anheuser-Busch let loose two whopping big beers: Brew Master's Private Reserve at 8.5 percent alcohol by volume and Michelob Celebrate, a 10-percent oak-aged ale flavored with vanilla beans.

 

Yeah, there's some weird stuff out there. But there are also some seriously good beers that are only available for a short time during the holidays. It's something fun to do during happy hour, and like I said – it sure is a great excuse to blow off an afternoon of work by starting with a celebratory lunch with some buddies and then bar-hopping your way through a few holiday beers. 'Tis the seasonal!