It's the Time of the Season for Drinking

Chris Lohring of Notch Brewing recently penned a screed decrying how seasonal beers are no longer seasonal. “Brewers have jumped an ENTIRE season ahead of when seasonal beers should be released,” he complains. The root of his dissatisfaction stems from a very practical problem.

I released my BSA Harvest in late September. You know, that time of September when Fall actually begins? Something about an equinox, I think. The BSA Harvest is a result of a program where Notch prepays a Western Massachusetts farmer for that year’s barley crop as in incentive, which in turn encourages local agriculture. The barley is harvested in August, malted a few weeks later, brewed in the beginning of September, and hits retail fresh on September 21st. A real harvest beer in the season we should drinking it.

And the response by an overwhelming percentage of retailers? They claim a September release is too late for a Fall beer, as they are making room for the Winter beers that will be in any day. This is the hand retail has been dealt, and it is certainly not their fault. So, a real Fall beer, the BSA Harvest, born of the change of the seasons that yields a barley harvest, is deemed too damn late.

The announcement that Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy would be released in February is the latest such absurdity I've noticed here in Wisconsin. (It was previously released in late March?! It's now two seasons early. And, if you read the article, it says that “shandy” is short for shandygaff “as it's called in England and Germany”. Really? I thought Germans called a mixture of beer and lemonade or soda a “radler”.) I became aware of the trend of seasonal brews appearing on store shelves before their traditional time mainly through seeing Capital's Oktoberfest earlier and earlier. I'd swear that at some point in the past it didn't leave the brewery until September but now you see it when it's still blazing hot outside in August and I fully expect it to be available for your 4th of July soiree within the next few years.

Lohring asks consumers to revolt by refraining from buying ostensibly seasonal brews out of season. Personally, I don't buy Oktoberfests until after Labor Day because it's too fucking hot in August to be drinking that style. I'm still quenching my thirst with Potosi's Steamboat Shandy. (Leine's shandy is for shite.) For me, the early arrival of seasonals isn't a burden. I don't suffer much loss and my well-being isn't really hurt by a summer brew hitting shelves while it's below freezing with snow on the ground, except for my sense that there are some traditions worth saving and adhering to. Perhaps the worst to come out of it is wanting to buy some Capital Oktoberfest but finding that Winter Skål has all the shelf space. Lohring, on the other hand, saw his business take a blow and presumably so too for one purveyor of local agriculture.

The thing is, I'm sure that most beer lovers who take offense at tradition being thrown to the wayside by the inanity of having Summer Shandy released in February have no qualms about eating out of season. Who among us only eats corn in August and refrains from apples until the autumn harvest?

Plus tradition is relative. I may look forward to heavier beers in September and October as the weather gets cooler but beer drinkers in the southern hemisphere are enjoying spring. Even here in the States, while I'm raking leaves in the October chill, it may still be in the 90s down in Tuscon. As far as beer goes, tradition comes from Northern Europe for the most part.

There's nothing objectively wrong with, say, drinking a pumpkin ale in July. I would wait until the autumn to drink one because I like to recognize the changing of the seasons and the traditions that go along with them. It's purely personal preference. I don't live in an agrarian society that throws big harvest festivals because we've spent the summer foraging for berries after we watched the last remaining vestiges of the previous year's bounty disappear. Those days are long gone for us and supermarket shelves are overflowing with foods of all kinds year round, something that our ancestors would have killed for. We have it good. Better than the vast majority of humanity had it through most of history.

I've read a few blog posts about this phenomenon but am still not sure why seasonals are so early these days. Lohring seems to point at Sam Adams and other large craft brewers. They started the trend to essentially get a jump on the competition who, in turn, followed their lead. How much of this is true, I don't know. Plus no one wants to have beer sitting around in a warehouse waiting for an arbitrary date to arrive whether it's the brewer or a wholesaler.

Other than seeing Capital's seasonals hitting the shelves earlier and earlier, it seems like New Glarus' beers always appear before they're supposed to. Their website may give a month but, from my glances at Woodman's shelves, their beers are available earlier. Cherry Stout was scheduled for March but was available in mid-February. Early but not hyper-early. I know it's not a seasonal but it's their most recent release. It just seems like when I get my expectations up for one of their beers and am eagerly awaiting the month of its release, I'll read a review of it by Robin Shepherd where he says that it's been out for a couple weeks already.

Any observant Cheeseheads out there that can testify as to how early other Wisconsin brewers put out their seasonals? Are Wisconsin brewers really bringing their seasonal beers out early because of Sam Adams?

I suppose the hope for us more tradition-minded drinkers is that the beers will come out earlier and earlier until they're finally being released when they had been in the past. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

A couple diversions:

First, I noticed that Notch brews session beers and session beers only. If you look at their brews, the biggest weighs in at only 4.5% ABV. From what I can tell, the brewery is doing well. Good on them for not jumping on the big beer bandwagon. In this day and age it seems like every beer is an imperial something or other and that 6% ABV is the low end of things. I wish more brewers would brew “true” session beers like Notch.

My guess is that it's harder to brew a tasty beer of 3.8% ABV than it is to brew one at 8%.

Lastly, I found this post by a gentleman named Jack Curtin on the whole issue of seasonal beers. He gives his opinion on the matter and closes by saying “For those of you who just want the next over-hopped, high alcohol, unbalanced mutation of a real IPA, none of this matters, of course. You gave up on beer a long time ago.” (Emphasis his.)