This is a great time of the year for beer lovers. Winter, more than any other season, is when craft brewers get a chance to flex their creativity and brew some unusual beers that satisfy the palate and warm the heart. Although many have traditionally been called Christmas beers, most brewers these days are going with some variation on the “winter” theme, in a large part because of the stigma of seeing a “Christmas” beer on the shelf on December 26th. Winter beers tend to be malty, and many of them use varying levels of traditional winter spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, etc). Fortunately, the Washington area has no shortage of places pouring these winter beers.

RFD in Chinatown has by far the largest number of winter beers on tap: Magic Hat’s Roxy Rolles, Clipper City’s Winter Storm, Bell’s Winter White, and the Dominion Winter IPA (a stellar pour, this one). According to the staff, a few others are on deck, and we assume that new winter beers will keep rotating in as the kegs empty.

If your tastes are tending more to the Belgian side of things, the bar at Brasserie Beck has St. Feuillien’s Cuvée de Noël on tap, and an additional 15 winter seasonals by the bottle (if they still have any of the De La Senne Equinox, go for it: it’s a silky smooth dark amber that hides the fact it’s 8% alcohol by volume very well). The Belgians tend to spice their winter seasonals more moderately than the Americans do, perhaps because normal Belgian ales have a higher incidence of spice use. Americans don’t drink a lot of spiced beer in general, so when American brewers spice them, they go all out. One notable exception to this immoderate spice use in the D.C. area is the Gordon Biersch Winterbock (pictured). It’s all malt here, and although it has a moderately sweet finish, it’s not too cloying and the 8.4% ABV is exactly what the doctor ordered on a cold winter night.