Unlike other pumpkin-flavored stuff this time of year, American beer has a deep history with pumpkins. My thoughts on pumpkin beer, the history of pumpkin and pumpkin spice, and my dream pumpkin ale:
The air is crisp, fantasy drafts are happening, and the best beer is back on the shelves. I'm talking, of course, of pumpkin ales and Oktoberfests.
Despite the awesomeness of pumpkin-flavored beer in my mouth, there are those who seek to poo-poo the enjoyment of this beer as commercialized, flamboyant, and gross. These people are both right and wrong, depending on the circumstance.
Philadelphia-based bookie company, Barstool Sports, blogged about how it's not too early to buy and drink pumpkin beer in August. Now, with football season looming, I am here defending pumpkin beers as:
An elite craft beer style;
An homage to the working American;
Something the brings nostalgia.
Check out my first pumpkin beer review of the year: Punkin Ale by Dogfish Head
If you don't like pumpkin beer, fine. No arguments. You do you. But, if you don't like that people do like pumpkin beer or you're someone who considers themselves a craft beer purest, turn it up.
First, pumpkin beer is one of the oldest beer styles in North America and it may be America's oldest contribution to the global beer scene, sort of.
Early colonial working class farmers and laborers drank mostly pumpkin beer this time of year because that's what they had laying around.
(You can read more about this from an awesome Mental Floss article, here: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/633227/history-of-pumpkin-beer)
For me, one of the most beautiful aspects of beer is how hyper-local it is. For centuries, even millennia, brewers have been making ales from whatever they had laying around. That's why there are such distinct differences between German Lager, American Lager, and Mexican Lager; the crops are different.
And so it was with pumpkin beer.
The problem with pumpkin beer from the 1700s was that it sucked. According to that Mental Floss article, it was tangy and boring and just not good.
The beer was also a status symbol. Poor people drank it. Workers drank it. Farmers drank it. Rich people did not; they drank higher-class beer which was more difficult to make and therefore more difficult to acquire.
Fast forward 200 years and a brewery in California, Buffalo Bill they're called, remade pumpkin beer based on President George Washington's beer recipes. Instead of keeping it the same, the folks at Buffalo Bill's added the spice cocktail we've come to know and love as "pumpkin spice." They also played around with the actual pumpkin malt by roasting it. So, in reality, the beer is a tribute to the George Washington pumpkin beer, but not a recreation.
This resurrection of pumpkin ales points out the actual issue with the overwhelming amount of pumpkin stuff shoved in our faces this time of year: there's a big difference between pumpkin and pumpkin spice.
Pumpkin is just a holiday version of a large squashy-type vine vegetable with a more noticeable aroma. The thing we associate with pumpkin flavor is actually a shit ton of nutmeg and cloves, aka pumpkin spice.
After Buffalo Bill's marketed the first pumpkin beer since the Founding Fathers drank beer, people made fun of them. They called it a money grab and a marketing ploy. This is both accurate and annoying. These critiques are coming from the same breweries that can't stop dumping random citrus crap into IPAs and telling us how good it is.
Pumpkin beer mania reached the peak in about 2015/16. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing well-known breweries shoving their version in our faces. These beers were marketed hard and, I suspect -- though can't prove -- filled with sugary shit that tasted too sweet. I won't name names, but these are big-time craft breweries that distribute nationwide.
I can't blame businesses for trying to make a buck. This is America.
All of this hype happened, I hypothesize, because of pumpkin-spice lattes, America's most polarizing beverage. Starbucks started this whole mess when they introduced the pumpkin spice latte in 2001. CNBC estimated recently that Starbucks sold more than 420 million PSLs in 2019, up from about 200 million in 2010. Holy fuck.
So, as America got addicted to pumpkin pie as a beer, and a coffee, and a yogurt, it makes sense that the quality of the actual product suffered. But, what's annoying, is that pumpkin is actually something that was used to brew beer.
The Wall Street Journal has great and hilarious coverage of all of this. A guy named Charles Passy wrote for The Journal in 2012 "I very rarely find a dish that celebrates pumpkin for what it is – a mild-tasting vegetable that speaks to the subtle sensibility of autumn." This article talks all about how different the spice and the actual veggie are.
Couldn't agree more.
The WSJ quoted an indie rapper from Canada (not kidding) who wrote a song called "Pumpkin Spice Armageddon" in a piece talking about this pumpkin spice epidemic. But, I can't care. This is the US of America, and we vote with our money. If people didn't buy this shit, businesses wouldn't make it.
I remember working in a high-class beer, wine, and liquor store in the autumn in 2016. Sam Adams' 20 Pounds O' Pumpikn flew off the shelves. I found it to be indulgent sugary trash and I suspect they agreed with me because I haven't found it since. Now, their Jack-O ale is much better, toned down, and delicious.
What I hate, though, are people who go out of their way to talk about how they hate it and shame people who love to indulge. Yes, it's a vibe. But, it's fall, which is objectively the best. School is back, football is back, the weather is downright erotic, and all the fun holidays are mere weeks away. Also, we all look better in fall clothes. That's like, a fact.
I understand not liking pumpkin-spice beer, though. Decadent sugar-beer is better as a thick, dark stout in my opinion, not in some brown-sugar nutmeggy beer. Southern Tier's Warlock, Elysian's Dark O' The Moon, and Great Divide's Pumpkin Spice Yeti are excellent if that high-ABV dessert pumpkin stout is what you're looking for.
But, what I want, what I really yearn for, is a beer that pays true homage to the farmers and workers of early America, prepping for winter, and filling their bellies with brown beer brewed with pumpkin, molasses, and maybe some other darker malts.
I like imagining Pennsylvania steelworkers and New England dock workers looking forward to pumpkin dark beer after work. FYI, good pumpkin ales like the Punkin Ale by Dogfish Head, and PumKing by Southern Tier are ELITE with hot wings.
The next step after the recipe is marketing. Most pumpkin beer labels and brands have Halloween angles. Pumpkins are the substance that sustained this country through its first hard winters. I would like a workman's pumpkin ale, not a Halloween gimmick. There are a few who get close. Specifically, Schlafly's pumpkin is understated and crushable, and the label is a nice burnt orange.
I'm looking at breweries like Yards in Philly, Anchor in California, Blacktooth in Wyoming, Yazoo in Tennessee, and actually, the Icelandic brewery, Einstök, would be great for this, too. Here's to hoping the Harvest Pumpkin brawler comes out one of these days.
Until then, I'll have to work up the courage to try Bud Light's Pumpkin Spice Seltzer.
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