Colorado craft brewers warm to the season with limited-release beers.

• Author: Jones, Marty

Colorado's beer lovers have extra reasons to celebrate the holiday season. This time of year, the best of Colorado's 83 craft breweries are unveiling limited-release brews made just for cooler weather. Like Beaujolais Nouveau's for wine buffs, these winter seasonals are a beer fiend's most anticipated offerings of the year. "Variety is the spice of life," says Ron Vaughn, manager of Argonaut Liquors, in Denver. "This is the time of year that Colorado beer drinkers get the most variety."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

They also get the most flavor. Richer in taste and higher in alcohol, these muscular brews ward off a winter chill better than Thermax long johns, and they satisfy changing tastes. "With cooler temperatures," says Avery Brewing Co.'s Steve Breezeley, "it's time for beer lovers to experiment with something richer and more hearty."

That thirst for something stronger brings joy to Breezeley and his peers, who get a kick out of brewing these beefy brews. "Our staff is always excited when we roll out the first batch of Old Jubilation," Breezeley says, referring to Avery's winter seasonal. The beer gives Avery's crew another reason for smiling: it accounts for 5 percent of the company's annual sales. And the company's chill-beating beer (as it is for most other microbrewers in Colorado) is pre-sold to retailers.

Winter seasonal brews trace their roots back to Europe, where hearty winter beers have been a tradition for centuries. They were later a part of early American life, but faded away through the 20th century. But over the past 25 years, America's craft brewers (as they have with so many of the world's forgotten beer styles) have resurrected the holiday beer culture in America.

Today, craft brewers large and small try their hands at these beers. In Colorado, the best of the bunch starts with Hibernation Ale, from Denver's Great Divide Brewing Co. A tea-colored celebration of malts, it's brewed in July and aged through October to allow its rich flavors to mature. (Winter strong beers are labors of love and time for the artists that make them.) This English-style strong ale (8.1 percent alcohol by volume) sports a honey-colored head, a silky texture, robust flavors of cocoa and mocha, and undertones of resiny hops. One of the state's most revered winter beers, it's excellent with gift chocolates, but it's often gone from most Colorado shelves by Christmas.

Avery's Old Jubilation is another of the state's cool-weather gems. An assertive...