I went last Saturday to get another Sam Adams Variety Pack and they were gone. They had Pumpkin Beer stocked. WTF? This was before Labor Day.
The stinking stores are just determined to shove winter right down our throats. It’s 95 freaking degrees out there and they want to push Halloween?
It’s not just Sam Adams pulling this stupidity either. This article lists several brands. I have nothing against a pumpkin beer on a nice 50 degree Fall day. 95 degrees and with sweat running down into my shoes? Do they think I’m drinking a heavy beer then? It’s gonna sit like a rock in my stomach. Do they want me to puke all over my deck?
I’m going to check out at Sams and see if they still have the Sam Adams Summer Packs. I don’t think they are sold out yet everywhere. Unless the stinking distributors pulled them off all the shelves at once for that out of season pumpkin crap.
At least the bars are showing some common sense. What bugs me is the pumpkin beers were brewed way too early. They’ll already be 45 days old by October when it’s time to drink them. Who wants a skunky beer?
Nah, don’t worry. They’ve got multiple batches going, so you’ll have fresh beer every day of the week.
Personally, I’m so tired of seeing nothing but summer wheat beer on the shelves that, swear to god, if I get this next job, I’m going to start brewing again.
I don’t so much mind that it’s available, some people like getting stuff the first day it comes out so breweries play the same game as other retailers by rushing stuff to market to be “first”. But when you’re dealing with small-to-mid sized microbrewers they usually do this by stopping production of summer beers early which is patently stupid.
I worked in the beer industry for a few years and I always found it frustrating when we had to persuade retailers to swap their seasonal handles off of out-of-stock summer beers in favor of Oktoberfest/Harvest/Pumpkin beers when the beer gardens and baseball games were still cranking.
Of course it seemed to work the opposite for just about every other seasonal, they couldn’t get rid of the damn pumpkin, Christmas or Maibock types fast enough so half the stock was growing stale. It’s a frustrating balancing act.
I thought it came out early this year, too, but was very happy on Labor Day, when it was about 55 degrees out, to pop open an Ichabod. I agree, though, that it’s not nearly as good when it’s hot out. Definitely a fall beer.
I was wondering myself about that, and why all the Oktoberfests have already been out for a few weeks. I mean, yes, Oktoberfest in Germany actually starts in mid-late-September, but I don’t recall seeing Oktoberfest beers here until late September, early October. It’s kind of weird to see them when the temps were in the mid-90s here (as it was last week.)
I’m torn on this one. I’m big on keeping seasonal things in the actual season, I’ve already been complaining about the Halloween candy displays at the store.
But personally … while I’m not a fan of pumpkin beers, in general I prefer fall brews over most summer offerings.
Not all bars hold off… was out last Saturday and the Sam Seasonal was already the Octoberfest. I have no idea if that was the bars choice or if they couldn’t get more of the summer stuff from their supplier.
Most of it tastes like a very mild, slightly malty ale with pumpkin pie spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.) Think basically an amber ale crossed with pumpkin pie. A lot don’t even bother with using actual pumpkin in the mash–just pumpkin extract, if using any pumpkin ingredients and not just implying them by using pie spices. I’m not a fan of this style at all, but if I had to pick one to recommend to try, it’s Southern Tier’s Pumpking ale or Dogfish Head’s Punkin ale.
It’s definitely the latter. The bar has a rotating seasonal handle and when the distributor ships the first of the new seasonal they swap the handle immediately.
Now, the cut-away isn’t perfect, the distributor has both summer and fall seasonals in the warehouse generally (though sometimes summer beers sell so fast it’s not for very long) and a really vocal/large bar will be able to either get some summer set aside for them, take on extra stock or specifically demand they find some extra barrels of summer if they care. That said, most bars don’t manage it that closely and they just take the next seasonal when it comes.
The reason for this has little to do with either the bar or the brewer, it’s almost all driven by the distributor. The distributor compensates it’s sales reps on a monthly basis and their goals all map to the calendar month. If they didn’t get the Oktoberfest into market in August 1st they couldn’t build it into the sales reps targets for the month. So they are faced with a choice, make it part of the September plan knowing full well that most sales reps won’t close most of their deals until the end of the month, or make it part of the August plan. If they make it for September, 75% of the sales won’t happen until the last week, when real Oktoberfest is basically over. Thus they make it part of the August plan. You see it in bars super early because the sales rep for that bar was particularly pro-active about selling that one early in the month to get out ahead of their comp plan.
The brewer and warehouse coordinate supply to facilitate this sales plan and ramp production accordingly, unfortunately this means that sometimes they guess wrong and either run out early or have way too much stock when the sales cycle shifts to the next target. It’s not that uncommon for Okteberfest beers to still be sitting around come Christmas and it’s equally common that they’ll run out of Summertime before the Fall brew is ready and they will squat on the handle with a couple kegs of a non-seasonal variety like IPA, Hefe-Weizen or a Belgian style.
Buying and selling beer is more similar to buying and selling cars than it is to buying and selling most other grocery items.
I assume the same applies for liquor stores and grocery stores, as that’s more what I was talking about (not bars, since I’ve not noticed much Oktoberfest action there, actually.) Why the sudden change, though? I’ve never noticed Oktoberfests at the shop this early in years past.
Yeah, same basic process. Off-premise is actually a little more dramatic since the sales targets are so volume focused that sales reps can’t sandbag their sales the way on-premise can. You will see whatever the distributor is pushing on the first Monday of the month like a switch was flipped.
This was before Labor Day.
It’s 95 freaking degrees out there and they want to push Halloween?