December can be a brewery's best month of the year. But it doesn't take much for things to go wrong. A Christmas seasonal that's still conditioning on 20 December. Kegs that haven't come back. Your regular delivery driver calling in sick during the busiest week of the year. Small problems that can quickly turn into lost orders.
Most of those problems are visible from October. Here are seven jobs worth doing now, each small enough to finish in an afternoon, so you head into the festive rush with stock you can trust, customers who've told you what they need, and a team that isn't relying on one person's memory.
How can breweries prepare for Christmas?
October is the time to get ahead of the Christmas rush. Seven jobs can make a real difference: work backwards from seasonal beer release dates, prepare your webstore, promote taproom bookings, check stock and chase keg returns, speak to key accounts, arrange staff cover and document delivery instructions. Sorting these early helps protect sales, avoid last-minute problems and take some of the pressure off your team in December.
1. Work backwards from your seasonal release dates
If you've got a Christmas special or winter seasonal planned, start with the date your customers actually need it, not the date you plan to brew it.
Take a pub that wants your festive beer on the bar by 1 December. Allow a few days for delivery, a few more for packaging and dispatch, then add conditioning, fermentation and quality checks on top. Work all the way back and you'll have your real brew date. For some beers, that date might already be closer than you'd like.
Then check the things that sit around the brew itself. Are packaging materials and labels ordered? Is there a slot on the canning or bottling line? Does the sales team know the date the beer will actually leave the brewery?
That last question matters most. Customers often plan festive events around a release, and if sales are promising one date while production is working to another, someone ends up disappointed. A single shared timeline for each seasonal release keeps everyone working to the same dates.
2. Get your Christmas webstore ready early
For many breweries, the webstore does a big chunk of its annual trade in the weeks before Christmas. Gift packs, mixed cases, glassware and vouchers all sell well, but only if they're live, stocked and promoted before people start their Christmas shopping.
Aim to have your gift range online by early November. Decide what you're offering, make sure gift boxes and packaging are ordered, and photograph everything properly while you still have time.
Then set your last order date for Christmas delivery. Check your courier's published cut-offs, add a few days of buffer for packing, and display the date clearly on your site and in your emails. Customers who miss it can still buy a gift voucher, so make sure those are easy to find.
Finally, agree how much stock is set aside for online orders. If the webstore and your trade customers are drawing from the same stock, a successful gift pack launch can quickly eat into beer you'd already promised elsewhere.
3. Make the most of Christmas party bookings in the taproom
Work Christmas parties are usually booked in October and early November, so if your taproom takes private bookings, now's the time to get in front of people.
Start by deciding what you're actually offering. A simple set of packages is much easier to sell than a vague "get in touch about private hire". For example:
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A reserved area with a bar tab
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Exclusive hire with a minimum spend
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A brewery tour and tasting, followed by food
Be clear about deposits, minimum numbers and your cancellation policy from the start.
Then tell people about it. Put your packages and available dates on one easy-to-find page, mention them in your newsletter and on social media, and contact local businesses directly. Offices, trade customers and suppliers you already work with are often the easiest bookings to win.
Don't forget the quieter dates. Offering a better rate on Monday to Wednesday evenings can fill nights that would otherwise be slow, and spreads the load on your team.
4. Check what's left from summer and chase keg returns
A busy summer leaves loose ends in the warehouse. Seasonal beers that didn't move as quickly as expected, packaging ordered for events that are now sitting on a shelf, ingredients creeping towards their best-before dates.
Before you place orders for winter production, do a proper stock count and check it matches your records. Then use what you find. Slow-moving packaged beer is worth flagging to the sales team now, while there's still time to build it into a deal or a mixed case. Ingredients nearing their dates might shape what you brew next.
Keg returns deserve their own look. If you're planning extra seasonal releases, the last thing you need is to discover you're short of containers because dozens are sitting in pub cellars. Pull a list of customers holding kegs, and send a friendly reminder to anyone who's had them for a while. Most people simply haven't got round to it.
A stock check now gives production, purchasing and sales the same reliable picture heading into the busiest weeks of the year.
5. Ask your key accounts what they've got planned
Winter doesn't affect every customer the same way. A pub with a big beer garden might quieten down, while another venue is packed with Christmas parties. Bottle shops may be planning gift packs, and some customers will be closing for a week over the holidays.
So rather than assuming everyone will order what they did last year, have a quick conversation with your key accounts now. A few simple questions go a long way:
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What have you got coming up over Christmas and New Year?
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Which of our beers are selling best for you right now?
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Are your opening hours changing?
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What's the last date you can take a delivery before you close?
The answers make production and delivery planning far more accurate. They also give you a natural opening to mention your seasonal releases, and give customers a chance to sort their orders before everyone gets caught up in the December rush.
6. Plan your staffing and cover for the busy weeks
The run-up to Christmas puts pressure on every part of a brewery at once. Production, packaging, deliveries, webstore orders and taproom events all peak around the same time, often while people are trying to book their own time off.
Map out your busiest weeks now and agree holiday requests early, so nobody's left negotiating cover in mid-December. If you need extra hands in the taproom, warehouse or packing area, start recruiting soon and get new starters trained before things get hectic, not during.
It's also worth looking at where your processes depend on one person. Perhaps the head brewer is the only one who knows the latest changes to the production schedule, or someone in the office has their own method for the monthly beer duty return. A shared checklist or a proper handover is usually enough for somebody else to step in.
That's better for your team too. Everyone deserves a proper break over Christmas without checking their phone in case the brewery can't manage without them.
7. Get delivery knowledge out of your drivers' heads
Your regular drivers know things that aren't written down anywhere. Which pub has an awkward loading bay, which customer wants a call before arrival, which back entrance is easier than unloading on the main road.
That knowledge is brilliant until your usual driver is off sick in the second week of December. Then someone covering the route is left guessing, in the dark and the rain, with a van full of Christmas orders.
For each regular customer, make sure these details are recorded somewhere the whole team can find them:
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Contact name and phone number
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Access instructions and where to unload
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Opening and delivery hours, including any Christmas changes
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Anything else the driver needs to know, such as cellar access or parking restrictions
Then test it. Ask someone who doesn't normally drive a route to look over the plan. If they'd need to ring the regular driver several times to work out what to do, there's more to add.
A little preparation now makes December easier
None of these jobs are glamorous, but each one protects sales you'd otherwise risk losing: the seasonal that arrives on time, the gift pack that's in stock, the party booking that fills a quiet Tuesday, the delivery that turns up even when the usual driver doesn't.
And if you've got time for one more thing, ask your team which recurring job has frustrated them most this year. Be specific about the fix. "Improve communication between sales and production" is hard to act on. "Review packaged beer availability together every Monday" is something people can start next week.
December will bring enough to keep everyone busy. There's no need to add problems that could have been sorted in October.
