Beer Buzzkills – Winter Beers At Retail Before Halloween

We recently saw Christmas lights up at a downtown shopping neighborhood we frequent, almost a week before Halloween, and it just seemed so wrong. And the same can be said about all the winter seasonals now crowding out all the pumpkin beers that shipped last August.

Seasonal beer releases used to mean something…they captured a time, place and vision, that was part of the beer’s ethos…but not any longer.

It’s all about commanding shelf-space nowadays, and being a first-mover, seasons be damned.

Hey we love Sierra Nevada’s annual holiday release Celebration Ale, just not before Halloween. And the same can be said for Deschutes Jubelale…But shipping it even before the leaves have begun to turn…really?

And we get that breweries are increasingly desperate to keep their sales numbers healthy as they look to fall and winter. Keeping beer sales going as the year wraps up is important to brewers for reasons that Jason Notte astutely details in The Street…

“According to the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the 16 million barrels of beer that the industry sells in August winnows away to 12 million by November before briefly climbing to 13.5 million for the December holidays. By January, sales drop to 12.9 million barrels and remain frozen there until roughly St. Patrick’s Day.”

Given that seasonal releases were second only to IPA category in consumer popularity in 2016, it’s understandable how this condition of “premature seasonality” (like that?), has evolved.

After all, It only take one aggressive major craft brewer to drop a fall or winter title in August and the rush for valuable shelf space is ON…no one wants to be left behind.

So at what point does consumer interest in certain seasonal releases begin to wane? To feel more a desperation marketing exercise to them than an invitation to participate in a seasonal celebration?

And at what point does that seasonal release lose its essential meaning and more importantly its charm?

Ultimately this decision will be made by the consumer…

But for us, winter holiday beers at retail two weeks before Halloween is a bridge too far…just sayin.’