Does alcohol warm me up?

Not quite. While alcohol can make you feel warm temporarily this is a perception generated by heat sensitive neurons (thermoreceptors) located in your skin that detect a rise in your skin temperature from an increase in blood flow in the vessels close to the skin’s surface. In fact, alcohol actually lowers your core body temperature because the rush of blood to the skin’s surface is a means of body cooling.

So while you may feel warm on the outside, you are getting cold on the inside. Alcohol consumption has also been shown to reduce the perception of cold air temperatures but it is thought that this effect may not come from changes in the dilation of blood vessels but may originate in the brain itself.

I have adapted this answer from my original article in The Conversation