A warmer Winter Warmer

I was out kayaking when No-Li Brewhouse tapped its Winter Warmer – and lived to tell about it.

OK, so it was 80 degrees on Wednesday. But I could swear I felt a slight nip in the air when I heard the news.

More and more, brewers are reconfiguring the calendar given the soaring popularity of seasonals among beer lovers always looking for the next new thing. Through Aug. 10, seasonal craft beer sales nationwide were up 19 percent over the previous year, trailing only IPAs and variety packs, according to Brewbound.com.

That’s why spring offerings start arriving in January, and pumpkin beers show up in July. And why No-Li’s Winter Warmer, scheduled to reach stores in 22-ounce bottles next week, is here before fall officially begins.

“The larger craft brewers are putting their winter beers in stores so early that if we don’t, we won’t get shelf space,” said No-Li’s John Bryant. “We were kind of told, if we don’t get it out by October, we might not make it.”

And besides, Bryant said, “When we start getting that cold air at night, it flips the switch from summer into fall.”

Actually, No-Li’s Winter Warmer would be hard to turn down any time of year. At 7.5 percent alcohol by volume and 72 International Bitterness Units, it’s a big, nicely balanced beer, with sweet toffee notes from caramel malt and a piney, spicy hoppiness from Northern Brewer,  Zeus, Cluster and Cascade in the boil, and dry-hopping with Northern Brewer and Chinook.

By the way, with the exception of Winter Warmer, No-Li is completely changing its Expo Series seasonal lineup for next year – beginning with a brand new Big Bang barleywine in mid-January.

With beers like that in the belly, it could be a warm winter, indeed.