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For many years, I’ve wanted to do a better job of matching my beer brewing with seasons and major holidays. But I always found myself behind. When October rolled around it was too late to brew that Oktoberfest, and my green beer was always a bit too late for St Patty’s day. My stouts were always finished for the warm summer months.
To combat this, I’ve assembled a brewing schedule of sorts to help me have mature beers ready for the right holiday or season. To keep it simple, I’ve listed popular styles of beer for different seasons by quarter, and a corresponding list of which quarter you need to brew them in. The assumption here is that 3 months lead time is enough for me to assemble the ingredients, brew the beer, and have it mature properly. While I don’t brew all of these styles each year, it gives me a list to choose from.
Winter Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Fall, Drink in Winter:
- Holiday Ales
- Christmas/Winter Beer
- Stouts, Porters and other Dark Beers
- Barley Wine (needs long aging – start a year or more in advance)
- Winter Wheats
- Smoked Rauchbier
- Scotch Ale
- Old Ale
Spring Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Winter, Drink in Spring
- Irish Ale and Irish Stout
- Green Beer for St Patty’s Day
- Bock/Doppelbock
- India Pale Ale
- Fruit Beer
- Wheat Beer, Weizen and Weisse – particularly Hefeweizen
- Saison
- Blonde Ale
- Belgian Wit/White Beer
Summer Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Spring, Drink in Summer
- Bavarian Weizen/Weisse
- Pilsner
- Cream Ale
- Steam Beer – California Common
- Kolsch Beer
- Summer Ales
- Saison
- Fruit/Wheat Beers
Fall Beer Styles – Beers to Brew in Summer, Drink in the Fall
- Marzen/Oktoberfest
- Pumpkin Beer
- English Pale Ale
- Brown Ales
- Dunkelweizen
- Harvest Ale
Do you have your own seasonal beer suggestion? Drop a comment below for all to read. Thanks again for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog. As always, don’t hesitate to subscribe for free if you enjoyed this article and want to see more.
6 users commented in " Seasonal Beer Brewing "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a Trackback[...] my daily home brewing blog posts I came across this gem of a post from the Beer Smith blog. Seasonal Beer Brewing is a post that walks you through the author’s quarterly brewing [...]
Very interesting entry, Brad! I just used the same seasonal thinking – brewed a cream stout a couple of weeks ago, so it will be ready this winter.
I’m going to link this to website and facebook.
[...] http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2009/10/18/seasonal-beer-brewing/ [...]
God wanted us to be happy and that’s why he made beer. I won’t be able to live on any other planet because only earth has beer.
[...] a good list at http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2009/10/18/seasonal-beer-brewing/ too, it goes by season instead of month. [...]
i just got beersmith for christmas. if the calendar were something similar to the outlook or google calendar, users could schedule their brews and set reminders, or perhaps the schedule provided above could be downloaded and added to an individual’s beersmith program/calendar. that would be a great option for the calendar. or maybe i haven’t figured that out yet
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