On season creep

This morning I was asked to speak about pumpkin beers on a local radio station. It’s September, so while it’s still not quite fall it’s at least a reasonable timeframe for pumpkin everything to be everywhere.

The problem is most of these pumpkin beers started coming out in July.

Season creep is not a problem specific to beer, as everyone who has seen Valentine’s Day decorations emerge the day after Christmas and Halloween stores pop-up following the Fourth of July can attest. But I write about beer, not kitschy home decor, so that’s where my rant is aimed. Fire!

Part of the problem is that breweries don’t want a seasonal left on the shelf after its season has passed – no one’s buying the pumpkin beer after Thanksgiving or the Christmas Ale after that fat guy finishes his chimney breaking and entering spree. They also base their brewing schedule on last year’s numbers, so if they sold (i.e. you bought) a shit ton of pumpkin beer last year, they’re gonna make a shit ton and a half of pumpkin beer this year.

So they brew a shit ton of pumpkin beer, and brew it a little bit earlier, then ship it off to their distributors who don’t want it sitting around in their warehouses, either, so they send it to the retailers who have to buy it – especially stuff like Southern Tier’s Pumking and Great Lakes’ Christmas Ale that is extremely in-demand and will be unavailable to retailers if they don’t get it early. And consumers obviously buy the stuff, or the breweries, distributors and retailers wouldn’t do any of this.

I’ve only ever seen one store flat-out refuse to sell seasonals early, and that’s Crafted Drafts on the east side. Owner Mike Troy posted several entertaining rants about season creep on Facebook that earned him many likes online and high-fives from customers in the store. But even he had to buy some of the limited release fall beers from the distributors when they first came out in order to not miss out on them, so he’s stashing them in the back of the store until he deems it seasonally appropriate (not yet, by the way) to sell them.

Winter is coming and I’m not talking about the Starks. Winter beers will be popping up in mere weeks on store shelves. Only you can prevent season creep. Don’t buy the damn things until there is snow on the ground.

Which, knowing Ohio, could actually be sometime in late September. Damnit.

edit: in the radio interview I said I didn’t think any Columbus breweries made a pumpkin beer. Smokehouse Brewing does – an Imperial Pumpkin Porter – which, thank god, isn’t out yet. Coming soon.

Full disclosure: Crafted Drafts is my client