It was still late summer when Adobe Creek brewer and owner Jonathan MacDonald told me he was about to brew his annual batch of pumpkin beer.
Which reminded me that it was time for my annual “oh no, not more pumpkin beers” story. Bashing this style, after all, has become fashionable among beer columnists and bloggers who, for five or six years, have ragged on brewing beer with additions of large orange squashes and a mélange of holiday spices. The story line goes that few, if any, other beer styles have so divided beer fans into lovers and haters than pumpkin beers.
As for the hating, I have decided it would be more interesting this fall to briefly examine it than deliver it. So, I ask, why so much hate for pumpkin beers? (If you have theories, please email me.) Creativity and experimentation are core elements of craft beer culture. Brewers use all sorts of ingredients to make beers taste edgy and different. Why, then, should there be a problem with using pumpkins?
If we could go back in time 20 years, or at least abandon our prejudices, we would probably agree that pumpkin beer sounds like a perfectly fine idea. However, it’s become cool to bash them.
MacDonald says that “there’s definitely a stigma around pumpkin beers.”
He attributes the bad rap to an association with pumpkin spice lattes, that seasonal signature drink of Starbucks that embodies the commercial focus on pumpkin pie spices in food products during — and even well before — the fall holidays. Pumpkin pie spicing isn’t a bad flavor blend. It’s just predictable, with countless food and cosmetic products now boasting pie spices during the Halloween marketing season. For many craft beer fans, seeing their beverage of choice corrupted by this flimsy marketing ploy surely annoys them.
At Pond Farm Brewing in downtown San Rafael, there are no plans to make a beer with pumpkin this fall, according to co-owner and head brewer Trevor Martens, who says he doesn’t want to make a beer that might be difficult to sell after Halloween. As for why people rag on the style, Martens has an interesting theory.
“I don’t think anybody really wants a pumpkin beer because pumpkin doesn’t have much flavor,” he says. “People who want them tend to want pumpkin spice beers, and it can be hard to dial in spice levels correctly, especially something really potent like cloves.”
As a result, he says, good pumpkin spice beers “can be hard to come by.”
I agree, and I’ve said it before: Pumpkin and pumpkin pie are not the same things. To call a beer that tastes like cinnamon and nutmeg a pumpkin beer is a disservice to the squash, which has its own, more subtle flavor profile. For his part, MacDonald is straightforward about his beer being a pumpkin pie beer. Its name — a 20-year-old movie reference — is Like Warm Pumpkin Pie. It goes on tap in a couple of weeks and will probably last until around Thanksgiving.
There is something else that I think must irritate some people when pumpkin beers invade supermarket aisles in September. The fall is when countless fruits come to ripeness, including apples, quinces, persimmons, figs, pomegranates, kiwis, grapes, feijoas, pawpaws, pears and nopales cactus fruits. Yet the beer industry — generally a nucleus of creativity — has become fixated on the pumpkin. Even beers brewed to showcase freshly harvested hops — a product of August and September — make less noise than seasonal pumpkin beers.
MacDonald has been brewing his pumpkin pie beer since about 2012. Before he went commercial in 2017, he brewed it every fall, often at the request of friends who had come to expect it at parties and gatherings (remember those?). The beer, 6% alcohol-by-volume, is brewed with a puree of roasted pumpkin and a mélange of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, orange peel and ginger.
“That blend really brings out the pumpkin pie flavor,” he says.
Each of the four years that he has brewed it commercially at his Novato facility, the beer has done well enough. But, he says, the beer isn’t necessarily back by popular demand.
“I brew it because I like it,” he says.
Which, in an economy driven by trendy sales gags, may be the best reason around to brew a pumpkin pie beer.
Alastair Bland’s Through the Hopvine runs every week in Zest. Contact him at allybland79@gmail.com.
September 30, 2020 at 02:13AM
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Good grief, it’s the great divider — pumpkin beers - Marin Independent Journal
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