We recently fired up our house’s heater for the first time this season, which means we’re well into winter seasonals over here in Sonoma County. Sierra Nevada Celebration hit the shelves a couple weeks before I’m writing this, and that initial 12-pack of hoppy-amber goodness did not last long in our fridge whatsoever. My wife was pumped to see Anchor Christmas Ale hit shelves shortly therafter; that’s her go-to winter pickup, and a pretty consistently tasty spiced beer despite the annual recipe tweaks. For how regularly we’ve been pouring IPAs, pale ales, or hoppy lagers from our household’s kegerator—this time of year marks a welcome shift.

What have you been picking up as the weather gets cooler? Back when we lived on the east coast and had more immediate access to Belgian offerings, we’d often pick up St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, Corsendonk Christmas Ale, and—likely the one we’d both pick if we could only choose one—Brasserie Dupont’s incredible Avec les Bons Voeux. Do you have local winter seasonals that you look forward to every year? Old-school winter classics you can’t wait to see on shelves? Or are you just hanging tight somewhere tropical, sipping hazy IPA, blissfully unaware of the seasons? Let us know what’s good on Twitter @RareBeerClub.

One of the most interesting parts of exploring beer is starting to enjoy things that you didn’t like before. Our friends recently popped some bottles of lambic to share at their house, and my wife Ali couldn’t help but recounting the time that I’d tried my first sour beer. We’d been living in DC, it was around 2005—and I was on a mission to try said “sour beer.” Such beers were a lot more scarce back then, and after assembling a target list of four or five of the well-rated sour examples over on RateBeer.com (where I’d been tasting through the various style categories), I managed to find my first sour beer: a $26 bottle of Cantillon Lou Pepe Kriek.

I only recently learned Cantillon’s Lou Pepe lineup of extra-impactful lambics took its name from a region of southwest France, where grandfathers are called Lou Pepe. Needless to say, I was not ready for grandpa lambic. I slowly drank it all because it was a $26 bottle of beer.

It’s harder for me to get to that same degree of unfamiliar flavor turf now, fifteen years on, a lot of it spent as a professional beer writer and reviewer. But it’s still fun to try and find that unexplored terrain… I recently picked up a Kölsch-style ale with Ceylon cinnamon and, uh, guava (from our local go-to HenHouse Brewing), which turned out shockingly good despite the disparate parts. And a friend shared an actually decent hard seltzer recently, from a local place called Ficks (made with real fruit juice). Who knew. What about you? What new drinks are you exploring? Working on any acquired tastes? Hit us up on Twitter @RareBeerClub.