Beer fundamentals: making sense of the summer beer conundrum

As temperatures begin to approach the upper 90s — with humidity to match — and Game of Thrones disappears, what is there to do all summer besides lament the end of hockey season? According to the flurry of advertisements that pop up during the summer months, the answer is drink beer. Beer companies seem to spoil the consumer during the hotter months of the year, as each one claims to have the perfect beer for summer. 

But what makes a summer beer, really? The obvious answer, as Justin Viale, assistant brewmasterof Pittsburgh’s Church Brew Works, puts it, is a beer that is “refreshing and drinkable to the point where you can have a few. Along that same line, probably lighter in alcohol, which is going to help it be lighter in body overall.” 

Lightness, however, especially as it applies to beer, is a very broad category. Styles including various ales, kolsches, pilsners, certain hefeweizens and even the woeful American adjunct lagers such as Bud Light fit the bill perfectly. 

According to Viale, the barrage of beer ads this time of year connects to a basic truth of the season: Americans drink more beer in the summer. 

“There’s definitely … a seasonal component to, I guess I’ll say quantity of beer drinking. You get into the swing of summer, and people are doing more cookouts and more sporting events and things like that where they might go through more beer,” Viale said. “I think it’s a result of what the beer is that makes it sellable.” 

The ability of any brewery, no matter its size, to actually sell the beer that it makes is paramount. Thus, given the popularity of annually released seasonal beers, it’s little wonder why brewers try to get a jump on their market competition. And if that means releasing a beer before its appropriate season, so be it. 

“It’s easy to sell an Oktoberfest a little early,” Viale said. “It’s impossible to sell an Oktoberfest when it’s November. Once it hits November, people are looking for Christmas beers.” 

Scott Smith, owner of East End Brewing Co., agrees. 

“There is certainly a lot of seasonal creep,” Smith said. “I think this month you might see pumpkin beers on the store shelves in the month of July, which to me is insane … Everybody wants to be first in the pool, and it just keeps creeping up every year.”

From the estimation of these two beer veterans, the industry is losing its sense of timing, and there is ample evidence to support this argument. For example, Samuel Adams’ Alpine Spring — a beer intended for, you know, spring — regularly hits stores and restaurants in late January, with Summer Ale arriving in early April. 

In one sense, brewers are simply moving ahead in an effort to maximize profit. Smith and Viale, however, maintain that this trend will move seasonal releases up each year, forcing them further and further away from their intended season. A year-round beer drinker who keeps up to date with availability will be able to confirm these suspicions, even if by only paying cursory attention. The moment a beer consumer enters his favorite beer distributor wearing shorts and flip-flops and sees a 24-pack covered in brown and orange leaves, he should know something is amiss. 

When asked if he thought this was indeed the case, Bill Powell of South Side’s Black and Gold Beer Distributor replied, “Definitely! It does seem like every year the seasonals come out earlier and earlier,” citing the beer industry’s favorite — and highly lucrative — whipping boy.

“We’ll probably have pumpkin beers in August,” Powell added.

If the idea of seasons is becoming less and less relevant in the minds of brewers across the nation, aren’t consumers left simply with different flavored beers at different times of year? 

Smith, for one, doesn’t find this trend particularly troubling.

“It’s not like you’re standing outside in the cold drinking [a winter] beer. You’re going to be in a warm place that’s probably not that different than it is in the summer months,” he said. “What does this seasonal beer thing really mean? Is it all just in our heads or just in our marketing heads, you know, as we’re marketed to as beer drinkers?”

In asking such questions amidst the sweaty and cluttered environment of the East End Brewing Co. office, Smith hits the proverbial nail on the head. What makes a pale ale or a hefeweizen more of a “summer beer” than a stout or a porter? 

In America, we insist on drinking all of our beer at ice-cold temperatures anyway. Would a chilled Brooklyn Summer Ale be any more refreshing or thirst-quenching than a Rogue Mocha Porter at the same temperature? Probably not. 

Viale sums it up by saying, “What people expect is what they’re going to want.” 

Thanks in large part to clever marketing, the American beer drinker, myself included, has come to expect summer beers with a light body and minimal malty sweetness. 

Whether or not it’s right, stouts and porters aren’t associated with those qualities. Indeed, many dark beers do possess a light body and a pleasant roasted flavor that’s not too dissimilar from iced coffee — another summer staple. 

Guinness Ltd. tried capitalize on this idea with the release of its Black Lager, a European dark lager with a thin, refreshing mouth feel alongside the smoky, burnt notes that dark beer apologists crave. It’s yet another perfect beer for summer, yet, despite Guinness’ efforts to market this beer as a refreshing summer component — as evidenced by its commercials, which frequently appear on ESPN — consumer still seek out this dark lager more heavily in the colder months and, of course, on St. Patrick’s Day.

Beer drinkers choose to follow the trends, which truly demonstrates the immense power of both advertising and preconception. So if the seasons are as irrelevant to seasonal beers as they seem to be, why continue with the construction of seasonal beers? 

As Smith puts it, “Seasonal beer is one of the few things that we can truly embrace as a change throughout the year.”

In spite of everything, he’s right. 

Sure, a seasonal beer might come out a bit early — sometimes to the point of absurdity — but it still marks the passage of time. In that regard, seasonals accomplish their end perfectly, even if their clocks are always wrong. How boring, one wonders, would life be with only a few types of beer available? Seasonal releases give beer drinkers something to look forward to. 

They give us a means by which we can trace the history of our favorite breweries, while allowing the brewers to stay creative. Whether it’s enjoying a barbeque or sitting in front of a crackling fire, there is no activity that beer, regardless of its seasonal association, doesn’t improve.