Summer Seasonals Are Here

Well,its February. We’ve had frigid cold temps here in the Mid-Atlantic. Tomorrow’s low is I think -5 degrees. Some more snow predicted this afternoon. Its been like 20 below in New England.

AB-Inbev’s Shock Top division feels all this would put you in the mood for a Summer Shandy. It is not a year round beer, it says summer seasonal on the label. The dating code begins with a 15, so it is not last year’s Shandy. This is the summer seasonal- out in winter. Never mind spring- WINTER.

To add some perspective, this is the equivalent of putting out your fall seasonal Oktoberfest or Pumpkin Ale in May.

*sigh*

Things are getting so screwed up that the store that sticks to its guns and won’t switch to spring seasinals during winter when the winter packs aren’t sold out is basically assured based on my past experience to skip spring completely. When they sell out of winter, the distributor will only have summer stuff to give them.

I had to go to a store I normally don’t go to in order to get the Sam Adams Spring Thaw pack, not because I really even wanted a spring pack in winter, but because I otherwise probably wouldn’t get a chance to buy it this year. Summer seems to be beginning in the beer world.

Is this ever going to start getting better?

We used to joke that the dates would keep getting earlier and earlier until they looped to the correct season (ie spring 2016 coming out in spring 2015). Now I am thinking it may actually happen.

I wonder if a craft beer trade association might consider regulating seasonals as a condition of membership. For example, they could state that in order to remain a member of the association or to sign up, each brewer has to stipulate that they will not brew a seasonal prior to the first of the month prior to which the climatological season begins. For example, spring seasonals could not be brewed until February 1, summer May 1, fall August 1, and winter November 1. Then the very earliest they’d hit the shelves would be during those months sometime.

To make it work, they’d probably have to secure the bigger craft beer companies and have them vote for it and sign on right at the beginning. Do a joint press release with the brewers of Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, etc. where they all sign a document. You can’t have any big holdouts or wait and see type brewers, because they’d just put their seasonals on the shelves early and be the only x season seasonal out there and steal other breweries’ sales. In fact, the main reason this whole mess exists in the first place is likely because some brewers started jumping the queue and releasing their seasonals just a little bit earlier than everyone else, forcing other brewers to follow; then someone tries to jump the new dates, and others have to follow, and so on and so forth. Then suddenly- summer in February! The whole industry has to move together collectively to fix this if it’s going to be fixed, because market forces are always going to push things in a direction that really isn’t ultimately good for consumers, the brewers themselves, or craft beer as a movement when it comes to this issue.

The only issue is what the macros would do. A pact like this could give macro owned craft or craft-like beers like Goose Island and Elysium a sales edge over smaller craft brewers, assuming AB-Inbev wouldn’t sign on. Also, I wonder if it would be considered collusion or restraint of trade, the craft association would have to have their lawyers look into it.

Originally posted by CharmCityCrab
I wonder if a craft beer trade association might consider regulating seasonals as a condition of membership. For example, they could state that in order to remain a member of the association or to sign up, each brewer has to stipulate that they will not brew a seasonal prior to the first of the month prior to which the climatological season begins. For example, spring seasonals could not be brewed until February 1, summer May 1, fall August 1, and winter November 1. Then the very earliest they’d hit the shelves would be during those months sometime.

To make it work, they’d probably have to secure the bigger craft beer companies and have them vote for it and sign on right at the beginning. Do a joint press release with the brewers of Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, etc. where they all sign a document. You can’t have any big holdouts or wait and see type brewers, because they’d just put their seasonals on the shelves early and be the only x season seasonal out there and steal other breweries’ sales. In fact, the main reason this whole mess exists in the first place is likely because some brewers started jumping the queue and releasing their seasonals just a little bit earlier than everyone else, forcing other brewers to follow; then someone tries to jump the new dates, and others have to follow, and so on and so forth. Then suddenly- summer in February! The whole industry has to move together collectively to fix this if it’s going to be fixed, because market forces are always going to push things in a direction that really isn’t ultimately good for consumers, the brewers themselves, or craft beer as a movement when it comes to this issue.

The only issue is what the macros would do. A pact like this could give macro owned craft or craft-like beers like Goose Island and Elysium a sales edge over smaller craft brewers, assuming AB-Inbev wouldn’t sign on. Also, I wonder if it would be considered collusion or restraint of trade, the craft association would have to have their lawyers look into it.

Originally posted by mkgrenwel
What would be the possible business incentive for them to do this?

None of us buy Shock Top...or read your long posts.

Originally posted by GodOfThunder
None of us buy Shock Top...or read your long posts.

Originally posted by CharmCityCrab

Originally posted by mkgrenwel
What would be the possible business incentive for them to do this?

If they could get an agreement from all parties, it’d be revenue neutral relative to the current practices and help with the authenticity/tradition/craftsmanship type stuff that these small brewers claim to find important. One could even argue that it would be a small propaganda boost for craft brewing in general, which tries to market itself as having principles, and here would be shown acting in what would be perceived to be a principled way. But they’d have to all move together for it to work.

But I’m relying here on the idea these brewers would like to have seasonals that don’t jump seasons so early and currently feel they can’t, because if they did that, they wouldn’t be as competitive financially with the season jumpers. If we could get a practice that standardizes things industry wide, it would in theory mean they would all be free not to season jump, or to do so only to the extent that it might be built into the system, because no one else would be season jumping.

I guess the other thought would be that winter beers being brewed to appeal to people in cold weather might actually sell better than a spring or a summer beer in that season *if* you could create a situation where the spring or summers beers aren’t on the shelf anywhere. The reason people buy spring and summer beers in winter is, I think, that they are just the newest thing to come out and they’ve been drinking winter beers for a long time at that point. If winter beers started later and there was nothing newer, people might not be sick of them or have new stuff to tempt them. You also wouldn’t have a situation like I just ran into where I knew I needed to get spring mix pack more or less now if I wanted one this year, because there was a good chance they were going to switch to summer sometime in March, whereas if I knew they were going to be brewed in March and and April and May and be available and *fresh* in those months, I might have held off.

I mean, let’s say you’re going to spend three months drinking each season’s beer. The ideal thing would be that the three months would actually coincide with the seasons, right? Pushing things forward several months still leaves you drinking each beer the same amount of time, it just leaves you drinking it at a time it’s not really brewed to be ideal for instead of matching up more exactly.

i honestly dont care what the season is,if the beer tastes good.then ill drink it

I offer constructive criticism in regards to CCC’s lack of brevity: it certainly doesn’t help foster conversation. If you actually read the posts, they only say about one sentence-worth of information per paragraph.

There is a whole lot of talking around the point, or repeating it and giving unnecessarily redundant examples. I know no one can make him post shorter, but if he wants to talk beer with people, it’s in his best interest to work on brevity.

Didn’t read the whole post, but get the point! It is ridiclous! These breweries are getting as bad as department stores w/clothing! Pumpkin beers in July, GL Conway’s Irish Ale on 1-2-15? Hell, by the time St. Patrick’s arrives, it’s all gone!

That being said, there’s probably nothing to be done about it! Everybody wants to be the first out!

Originally posted by mkgrenwel
I offer constructive criticism in regards to CCC’s lack of brevity: it certainly doesn’t help foster conversation.