Seasonal Beer Creep

I've long been a fan of the Boston Beer Company and I enjoy many of their beers.  The Octoberfest is one of their best and I look forward to it every year... to a point.  See, the problem is: I'm seeing it in stores already.  In early August.

The Munich festival for which the style is named doesn't start until late September (September 22nd, this year).  The Oktoberfest, or "Märzenbier," style is a traditional one for the autumn months: it's toasty, to welcome in the cooling weather, and heavier-bodied than the lagers and lighter ales that dominate the summer; it's also darker and richer, prepping the body and the palate for the richer winter beers that follow.  The average temperature here in DC is still in the upper 80s/low 90s and it's not much better through most of the contiguous United States (including in Boston and Cincinnati--where most Samuel Adams beers are brewed).  This can be expected to last through August and probably into September, when it'll rarely dip below 70 or 65. 

In sum, it's too damn early for Octoberfest.

You'll reply, "Well, you'll still drink it."  Yes, I will.  But only because it won't be there when I actually want it, replaced by Christmas beers in time for Halloween.  And I have no interest in drinking Old Fezziwig on Veteran's Day.

I understand that the Boston Beer Company is not the only guilty party; I saw Blue Moon's Harvest Moon (a beer I don't care for when it is the right time of year) in a store just the other day.  But Boston is, in some ways, the exemplar of what microbreweries can be--and what many of them strive to be.  It's larger than the other guys, of course, and it's continuing status as a "micro-brew" was as much a mutually-beneficial political decision as anything else, but they do set the trend.  It won't be long before we start seeing Bell's Oktoberfest and Brooklyn's Oktoberfest and other fall beers like DFH's Punkin Ale, all before their ideal time.  Because no one can afford to be last to the shelves. 

Something is very wrong here, Sam Adams.  Fix it.