Plan Your Brewing Year

I found this great article from Time Magazine: The Seasons Of Beer

It included this graphic:

What struck me as a homebrewer is how early these guys release their seasonal offerings. This article was published in 2014 but if anything, the trend seems to be getting worse. Beers are pushed out earlier and earlier. For example, Pumpkin Beers in August?? No thank you!

However, this should perhaps be a strategy we homebrewers use by laying out our brewing calendar for the year, including seasonal releases. Perhaps we may not need a 3 month lead time but it would be helpful to plan when we will brew and serve our planned batches of beer.

For example, most ales would likely need 2-4 weeks lead time for a release date. Lagers, on the other hand could be served after 2-4 weeks but many styles benefit greatly from a longer conditioning time. This could all be planned out in the brewing calendar.

Here at seasons of the brew, we do not offer this brewing calendar feature yet but it is certainly something I hope to introduce soon to this site.

Another option would be to simply create a Google calendar that keeps your brewing dates and release dates. This can be linked to in your seasons of the brew profile. Look for the "Brewing Calendar URL" in your profile or start here