Freezing out there, so have a nip of brandy or whisky to warm up, the classic hip-flask logic. The St Bernard supposedly carries a little barrel of it for stranded skiers, and a hot toddy is the cosy cure for a cold night. That warm glow spreading through your chest must mean it is working.
Alcohol makes you feel warmer while actually making you colder where it counts. It widens the blood vessels near your skin, a process called vasodilation, which floods your surface with warm blood and gives you that pleasant flush and toasty feeling. But that warm blood is being pulled away from your core and pumped to the skin, where it sheds heat to the cold air faster, so your core body temperature actually drops. Worse, alcohol blunts shivering, your body's main way of generating heat, and dulls your judgement about how cold you really are. That combination is genuinely dangerous in the cold and is a known contributor to hypothermia deaths; people feel warm, shed layers or stay out longer, and quietly chill toward trouble. So the warming nip is a trick. It trades a comforting glow on your skin for a colder centre, which in real cold is exactly the wrong trade.