Back in the 1500s, Bavaria banned brewing straight through the summer. Too hot, too much risk, too many batches lost to the heat. Brewers did all their work in the cool months instead, built something sturdy enough to survive the warm ones, and let it rest in ice-packed caves until festival season. Five hundred years later, that's still roughly how a lager has to be made, and it's why a beer associated with fall keeps showing up in August.

Spindletap's Festbier is their take on a Premium German Lager, an easy 4.2% ABV with gentle notes of honey, almond, and hazelnut, finished clean with just enough noble hop to hold it together from the first sip to the last. It's a beer that can't be rushed, which is a strange thing to say about something arriving a full two months before actual fall weather touches Houston.

Back July 31st, a day earlier than planned, because apparently even a five-hundred-year-old brewing tradition can move up a day when it wants to.