Pintgeek

hops. grain. data.


Finding Christmas Beer

beer styles christmas holidays

December. The weather is getting colder and the beer is getting darker. Stouts, Winter Warmers and Strong Ales replace Pale Ales, Ambers and IPAs. But what is the beer of December, and specifically, Christmas?

To find the beer of Christmas, we're going to start with the SNAP BeerAdvocate Dataset on Kaggle, containing 1.5 million billion beer reviews over a 10 year period of time ending in 2011. This dataset contains reviews from 33,000 users, for 66,000 beers across 100 styles, and should contain the data needed to find the beers of the season.

What is the beer of December?

First things first, we're here to find the top beers of December. Simply starting with the number of beers with the most reviews in December, we see some familiar favorites, not all of which feel like winter. IPAs lead the pack, with the American IPA and Double IPA as the two most popular beer styles by sheer number of reviews. Following the IPA, is the Winter Warmer, Russian Imperial Stout, and several other high ABV brews.

IPAs are incedibly popular year round, so seeing them at the top of the list for December isn't necessarily telling or interesting. A better measurement may be What percentage of all reviews for a beer style take place in December?

This adjustment is much more interesting. Winter Warmer makes the top of the list, with a whopping 31% of all annual reviews occuring in December. New to the list is the Bière de Champagne / Bière Brut, with 24% of all of its reviews coming in December. The rest of the top 10 drops off quickly, and consists largely of darker beer styles with higher ABV (average of 8%), to stay warm in the cold winter months.

Beer of December: Winter Warmer


Runner-up: Bière de Champagne

What is the beer of Christmas?

With that out of the way, it's time for the question of the day, what beer is more likely to be consumed on Christmas than any other day of the year? To start, we'll explore the December winner, and see how the Winter Warmer fairs.

The popularity of the Winter Warmer slowly increases over the first 3 weeks of December, reaching 3.6% of all reviews on December 20. At that point, though, the Winter Warmer popularity falls sharply to less than 3% of all reviews occuring on Christmas Eve.

Taking a moment to include the rest of the top 5, a clear winner is apparent, the Bière Brut, the December runner up. With 8% of all of its December reviews occuring on Christmas day, this beer clearly wins Christmas. And looking forward a week, this beer gets another 20% of its December reviews on New Years Eve. That's nearly 28% of all Bière Brut reviews coming on just two days in December.

A dark horse on Christmas Day goes to the Belgian Strong Dark Ale, with 4.6% of all December reviews on Christmas Day, compared to a the Winter Warmer, gathering 3% of its total December reviews on Christmas Day.

Beer of Christmas:Bière de Champagne


Runner-up:Belgian Strong Dark Ale


What makes a winter/Christmas beer?

What do the Winter Warmer, Brut, Belgian Strong Dark Ale, and the rest of the top 10 have in common to define a winter beer?

Higher ABV. All of the beers in the SNAP dataset had an average ABV of 7%, while the December beers had an ABV of 8%, and the Christmas beer styles had an ABV of 9%.

Malty. These beers are low IBU, ranging from 8 - 20 IBU, with a malt-forward profile. As opposed to the American IPA, which starts at 40 IBU, giving the characteristic nose and bitterness of the IPA.

Seasonality. While Brut and Belgian Strong Dark Ales can be found year round, Winter Warmers are a seasonal beer, released in late fall or the early winter.

Personal Preference. The best beer is the beer you like to drink. Sure dark, high ABV, seasonal beers are relatively more popular in the winter months, but the American IPA still rained surpreme by total reviews in December, because that's the beer people like. So drink what you want.