Color me confused.
This past weekend, I dropped into a local store to pick up a sixer of Sierra Nevada Tumbler, the brewery’s fall seasonal. It wasn’t until I stumbled into the cooler that I saw only two six packs remaining. To my amazement, the store still had another fifteen cases or so of Sierra Nevada Summerfest left to sell. Summerfest started making the rounds in April.
APRIL.
And yet every other brewery seems to be way ahead of schedule. Brooklyn Brewery released its Black Chocolate Stout about three weeks early this year. It started hitting shelves last week per the link below. Yet, I still see plenty of activity around Brooklyn’s Post Road Pumpkin Ale. Hmmm…
Oskar Blues Brewery is releasing its Ten Fidy Imperial Stout about a month early. Oskar Blues doesn’t have a fall seasonal though.
So here are your winter stouts beginning to roll out…and to think that the calendar just turned from summer to fall three days ago.
Perhaps one of the tenets of rapid growth is “Get those seasonals out first!”
I don’t want to be marauded with Fall beers in the middle of the summer. I don’t want big, heavy stouts thrown at me before the leaves even turn. It was 85 degrees here (Buffalo, NY) yesterday. This whole concept is so blatantly just about making money that it really insults and undermines the origins of seasonal beer styles.
I just hope we arnt doing to sesonal beer what retailers and merchandise has done to holidays. Each year they seem to advertise a holiday right on the heels of another…if not before. They keep doing it so there must be some sort of profit in it, but it makes the experiance less enjoyable. I love my seasonals. For me they are the highlight of the passing months. However I dont want to have some one trying to get my attention for the next one when Im trying to enjoy the current beer.
+1 on Josh’s comment.
Here it is September, and I say Christmas stuff being put out in Lowes yesterday! I was also a little shocked to the the Fall seasonal beers hitting the shelves in mid-August when temperatures are still in the 90’s in these parts! Slow it down fellas!
I guess that there’s only one solution: brew stouts year-round 🙂
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