Blitzed Smashed and Drunk: Season Creep, Pumpkin Beer and Boston Brewing

Over the last few days, I’ve noticed something in my local beer store. Maybe you guys have noticed it too. Pumpkin Beers are slowly appearing on the shelves. Pumpkin beers mean the season is changing. Except when I look out the window, read the thermometer in my car or even look at the calendar, I don’t see signs of the fall anywhere. It still feels like we’re in the height of summer. Even with it winding down and the dog days and that feeling of the late Indian summer approaching, there is nothing that says fall is in the air…. Except in the liquor stores, bodegas and breweries. Even the CSAs that I am a shareholder in haven’t started putting out the last wonderful vegetables of the summer just yet, let alone the first of the autumn growth. Yet as I write this, I am sitting here, drinking beer that was rushed to market and lacks the soul it used to have.

This phenomena is called Season Creep. It is unique to the beer world; no other form of alcohol has such a demented madness that drives it push the creep on the consumers. There are reasons for it, or so I’d like to think, but if we’re lucky, maybe in 2025, beer will be back to a normal beer calendar and Pumpkin Beer will be enjoyed when it’s supposed to.

For the longest time, beer would be brewed to correspond to the season it was meant to be drank in. Marzenbeir, or March Beer, was brewed to be drunk in the spring. Oktoberfest was Marzenbeir that has been allowed to lager in cool cellars and slowly ferment from March until September before being served. The Winter Warmer and the Biere de Noel were brewed for consumption during Christmas and the winter. The French had the Biere de Mars to be drunk in the spring. Beer had its place in every season. Fast forward to today. We have the rise of craft beer and a huge population who likes drinking seasonal beer. As seasonal beer has become more popular, people have wanted more and more of it. While some might equate this to production issues and supply and demand, the issue has become who can be “first to market”. This has lead to Season Creep. When it comes to beer, Season Creep, which itself is a phrenology term, is just simply the slowly moving forward of a release date in order to be first to market for a given seasonal beer. Between August 1st and August 18th, I have seen 20 different fall beers and it’s not even fall. I definitely call that Season Creep. I even bought my first Pumpkin beer of the season, which is way too early if you ask me.

I never really noticed Seasonal Creep that much before the last year or two, when I was hunting for a very specific beer to enjoy around the holidays. The first time I tried that magic holiday beer, Troegs Mad Elf ale, it was as if I had finally tasted a beer worthy of being called the Nectar of the Gods. It was in December of my sophomore year of college. We had some fraternity brothers who wanted two cases at our Winter Formal and I snagged a bottle of this miraculous beer that tasted of honey when it hit your lips and had a wonderful element of tartness and sourness from the cherries it was brewed with. This became the beer I drank while celebrating the winter holidays with, and at 11%, it could hold its own being aged and the flavors came through for years to come. Plus, at 11%, it could knock you on your ass if you weren’t careful. It used to be you could only buy Mad Elf between Thanksgiving and the end of February. Over the last few years, it slowly got pushed forward; last year I bought my first case of Mad Elf in October just to make sure I had it available for the heart of winter. As the release dates kept moving forward, I began to wonder why and the more I dug into the matter, the more I came up with a theory.

Common theory behind Season Creep has to do with brand recognition and loyalty. There is a need to be the first to market and people, particularly beer drinkers, tend to stick with that beer through a given seasonal release period. There is research which supports this, but I don’t believe it. I think that Season Creep has less to do with companies wanting to be the first to market and more with companies being forced to play by someone else’s rules for major releases. To pull off being first to market, it used to be that you just needed to get your beer brewed and in first and, generally speaking, things would fall out with the seasons in tow by a few days. Even then, it wasn’t really being first to market, as breweries needed to get their beer to the distributors which meant distributors could ship 5-6 different brands at the same time in the same first shipment of a seasonal beer. To completely change when the seasonal beers come out doesn’t require being first to market, it requires enough pull with your distributors and enough production capacity to force your competition to move their production calendar up in order to play by your rules.

Having enough sway with a distributor is a matter of volume being sold by a given brand. Most beer distributors have a partnership with the Big 3 (AB/Inbev, MolsonCoors and SABMiller… well… Big 2 actually given that MolsonCoors and SABMiller have a joint venture to run the US operations of both brands called MillerCoors but that’s beside the point) and the Boston Brewing Company. Those brands sell a lot of beer. When they speak, they are generally heard. They also have the production capacity to sell that much beer. Of the list of craft breweries in the US, only two produce more than 1 million barrels of beer a year and one of those breweries is Boston Brewing Company. With a production capacity of ~3.5+ Million barrels of beer, Boston Brewing Company also happens to be the largest producer of seasonal and specialty beers in the US. That definitely gives them a great deal of pull. If they want to be the first beer out in a given season, they can let that be known to their distribution network. They can, as a result, produce beer early enough to make sure they are the first to market without affecting the rest of their production for other brands, even if it means pushing a seasonal release schedule ahead by a few months. Since no other craft brewery has that kind of pull, Boston Brewing Company can leverage that kind of pull and production capacity to beat everyone to market. They set when seasonal beers are generally able to be released and are considered the de facto first beer to market every season.

Season Creep’s effect on pushing up release dates has two major byproducts. The first is that these beers are no longer “Fresh” when the season they are supposed to be drunk during finally starts. Although beer can, up to a certain point, keep well in the bottle and can, Kegs traditionally have a very short shelf life. Depending on the beer, we’re talking a shelf life of 20-70 days from when a bar gets the keg in. For beers under 7.5% ABV, the shelf life of an unopened, properly cared for beer is about 3-4 months. While this is fantastic for the beer drinkers who want to buy and hold before digging in to their trove of beer, most drinkers don’t want to beer without being able drink it soon after. And for those crazy folk who want to hold their beer, the fresh taste decreases over time. Thanks to Season Creep, that’s why, come October, these same beers are no longer found on shelves in order to accommodate selling only the freshest products for the next season.

The second byproduct has to do with the flavor and way beer is made. Traditionally, many seasonal beers are brewed with ingredients grown or available during a given season. Pumpkin, for example, was a widely used choice for fall beers because it would first be ripening at the end of August and beginning of September. Harvest beers were brewed to commemorate the end of the hops growing season (Late Summer), and late harvest beers were brewed to commemorate the last grain harvests of the season. While these flavors can be emulated, there is a marked difference between using proper ingredients and using spices and flavorings. It’s a shame too, because some of the best beers I have had were made with real ingredients instead of spices and mixes aimed to emulate flavors instead of create flavors. For all of the use of ingredients that happen, particularly in creating unique flavors and profiles, the lack of real ingredients hurts the beer more than it helps it.

I suppose I could say that I blame Boston Brewing Company for Season Creep. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think Season Creep would be this endemic to beer culture. The flipside however, is that there wouldn’t be as much of a market for craft beer if it weren’t for Sam Adams. It’s a double edged sword and one that I dislike. While my preference would be to have no Season Creep, I get it and just wish it wasn’t as rampant as it is. Truth is, I love some of the beer brewed by Boston Brewing Company; this year’s Octoberfest is really nice by the way and I recommend everyone try a pint. I just don’t want to drink Octoberfest when a Summer Shandy would really hit the spot right now. So, I suppose this means that I’m gonna buy and hold some high ABV Pumpkin Beers until the end of October and enjoy them in season despite the Season Creep fucking up my shit.

Authors Note: Yes, on a completely unrelated note, I happen to buy shares of two different Community Supported Agriculture farms. CSAs are farms that sell shares to investors. In exchange for buying a share/half share in a given year, your investment is repaid in the form of fresh produce every week during the farming season. I think it’s a fantastic investment. As a fan of fresh produce, the Green Market (and Farmers Markets in general) and cooking with quality ingredients in general, I’ve been very happy with the vegetables I’ve gotten from my CSA boxes week in, week out. I would highly recommend looking into them and trying it out at least once.

 

At 9% ABV, Smashed Pumpkin makes a great candidate for aging. Even though you end up getting some degradation when it comes to the hop notes, the malt becomes a bit more forward and the sweetness actually mellows out somewhat making it a far more drinkable and enjoyable beer. Instead of the far more cloying pumpkin beer, you end up with a much more balanced beer worth drinking. I think it would have less Pumpkin Pie and more subtle Pumpkin Flavor if it were brewed with actual pumpkins instead of the flavor mix.

 

It's definitely the strongest pumpkin ale I've ever tried.

On another topic, I actually think that Sam Adams' contributions to craft beer as a whole outweigh its distasteful season creep. I find it annoying as well, but I just can't overlook the fact the industry would not look the same today if not for Jim Koch.

Metal. Music. Life. www.headofmetal.com
 

@"curiosity killed the cat" @Frieds can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's a Prohibition-era law still on the books that makes it illegal to ship beer in the mail.

Although @"Edmundo Braverman" told us about an aspiring beer dock in Paris specializing in American craft beer, and they're cleaning up.

Metal. Music. Life. www.headofmetal.com
 

Just wanted to throw out a pumpkin beer for you guys: http://www.jollypumpkin.com/artisanales/fuegodelotono.htm

Its available in October, preventing some of the lack of freshness Frieds talked about. It is possibly the best autumn beer I've had to date.

Some of their other offerings can be found here: http://www.jollypumpkin.com/artisanales/beers.htm

Unfortunately, distribution is very limited, as they are based in Michigan. If you can find it, definitely buy it.

 

@"In The Flesh" - I think Boston Brewing company has done wonderful things for beer. Just because they have been a fantastic company and, generally speaking, very good products doesn't mean they also get a free pass. I think that if it were AB/InBev or MillerCoors who were pushing Season Creep, it would be a different story all together. People would be far angrier that the biggest folks in the yard are making it their business to push what they want on the world. Since it's Boston Brewing Company, they can straddle the fence on this one. I'm sure there are folks who don't mind the season creep that has come about. At the same time, I have friends who aren't hardcore beer drinkers and they can't stand how early the pumpkin beers come out. I really believe that this is a matter of preference with casual beer fans not really caring and and people who are a bit more knowledgeable at least being aware of what's going on.

@"curiosity killed the cat", you just have to google it. Unfortunately, US Shipping laws are really weird when it comes to Alcohol. After Granholm v. Heald in 2005, the Supreme Court made it legal to ship wine from wineries directly to the consumer. This, obviously, has expanded into beer. There are strings attached and certain states forbid direct shipping to consumers, but it's the only way you can legally ship Alcohol in the US for the purposes of consumption. First, you need to be in a state that allows both the shipping and receiving of alcohol. IF you are, as a retailer/distributor, you need to have a alcohol shipping contract with either UPS or FedEx to engage in the legal shipping of alcohol. Conversely, the package needs to be accepted by someone over 21. While I can't say for certain, as I don't know the rules for international shipping, I could only guess that you could try and find a liquor store/distributor that does online sales and see if they will ship internationally. Without knowing what country your based in, I also can't say if there are other restrictive laws in effect or whether or not buying beer from the UK and having it shipped to Germany would have an effect on things or anything like that. As I said, I would google websites that are able to import beer wherever you are. Without trying too hard, I came up with two websites, Beers of Europe and Beer Merchants. I'd just search and see what you can dig up.

@"VoidTrading", I like Jolly Pumpkin. In my humble opinion, the La Parcela is much better than the Fuego del Otono, but that's just me. I really do like their pumpkin beer. Finding any of their seasonal releases is hard to do though. Good call bringing up Jolly Pumpkin, by the way. IF you can find it, as VoidTrading said, it's definitely worth trying. Both the La Parcela and Fuego del Otono are great.

 

@Frieds I was talking to one of the brewers at Smuttynose this weekend and asked about seasonal creep. He maintained that the distributors drove it, BC they wanted the full batch for delivery earlier and earlier just so they could have it on hand for peak season (questions of aging and flavor are apparently lost on them).

Metal. Music. Life. www.headofmetal.com
 
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