Serve specialty beers when seasons change

By DAN NEPHIN

PITTSBURGH — Shorter days. Cooler nights. And more — lots more — beers to pick from.

The advent of autumn and the holidays that follow brings a flood of seasonal beers to market, from pumpkin spice ales to Oktoberfest and yuletide brews. This, of course, follows a long hot season of wheat, blueberry and other summer beers.

But it turns out seasonal beers, the latest popular offshoot of the craft and micro-brew phenomenon, isn’t all that new.

“Christmas beer is a tradition that actually predates Christmas, frankly. It goes back to the earliest days of brewing,” says Don Russell, a beer writer who’s just written “Christmas Beers: The Cheeriest, Tastiest and Most Unusual Holiday Brews.”

“Whatever holiday was going on, brewers would have made special beers for that holiday,” he says. “You wanted to mark the occasion with something special.”

But in recent years, breweries large and small have rolled out seasonal beers.

“About a year ago is where we saw seasonals pass pale ales as the number-one growth in craft beers,” said Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association, a trade association in Boulder, Col., with about 1,100 brewer members.

Seasonal beer sales grew about 23 percent in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year, he said.

“’What can I try that I haven’t tried before?’ is really driving a lot of the sales in the category,” Gatza said. “The craft beer drinker tends to like to have different beers in their fridges from different brewers on different occasions.”

Just as wine drinkers vary their selections by season and what they are eating, a growing number of beer drinkers want their beverage to work with what and when they eat.

“It’s a great marketing idea. You can call it a ploy, but it’s great to have the variety,” Russell says.

Wheat beers for summer, for example. “In the last two years, wheat beer has been the hottest trend in craft beer,” says Russell. “Everybody, it seems, is offering a wheat beer.”

Though fall and winter appear to have the most seasonal beer offerings, Russell says summer wheat beers “might be reaching, if not outstripping, seasonal beers as a style.”

For the breweries, it just makes good business sense. Besides giving consumers more choice in shops, at bars seasonal beers often land their own special taps. This is a move mastered by The Boston Beer Company, the maker of Samuel Adams.

Company founder Jim Koch has been a pioneer in the seasonal beer niche. But it wasn’t always easy.

“For 15 years, consumers and retailers struggled with the idea” he says. “At this point, you’ve even got Bud, Miller and Coors jumping on the bandwagon.”

Koch first began making seasonal beers in the fall of 1987, when he offered a double bock followed by an Oktoberfest.

2008, The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.