Yes, it's not October, there are still a handful of 80 plus degree days in our future, the leaves have not actually fallen yet, so it may be too early for pumpkin beers. Over the past several weeks though, these pumpkin beers have begun to swamp shelve space in all of my favorite beers stores (ie Wegmans and Whole Foods.) But if you don't buy them now, they're not going to be around when you actually want to drink them anyway, so just consider the middle of August to be the start of fall, and crank up the AC. There are actually some good reasons for these beers hitting shelves early, as there are for spring and summer beers creeping into the end of winter. I weeded through a handful of articles and feedback on the subject, and here are some of the more interesting and thoughtful ones. From Schlafly, Scranton Times Leader, and some idiot at the New York Village Voice. That last one's important because there is a quote from a Sixpoint brewer about pumpkin beers being released in July/August not being made with fresh pumpkin. Duh. But until Sixpoint makes a pumpkin beer that's even half as good as Dogfish Head's or Southern Tier Pumking, that's not an appropriate argument for waiting until November or December to release pumpkin beers. It's interesting to read brewers takes, distributors opinions, and customer feedback on the subject. The bottom line is that we're going to continue to get seasonal beers earlier and earlier every year, because they get allocated earlier and earlier, which means they're going to be sold out earlier and earlier every year. Which is awesome... I think. At least we live in a world where distributors (in this specific case Brewers in Mt Airy) now carry 30 odd seasonal selections from just as many breweries, instead of bringing in Camo Cans of Milwaukees Best to welcome Fall.
Oh yeah, there were some Oktoberfests too. Let's start with Great Lakes. The Great Lakes website is awesome, and they have spec ads for each of their beers. This one, is filled with decent jokes, thoughtful history, flavor notes, food pairings, and just about anything you would want to know about what goes in the beer. Outside of actually giving you the recipe and a youtube video showing you how to brew the beer, Great Lakes always has the most information about their lineup on the website. They also have a pretty cool store, tons of glassware, and weird informational videos. They had this on tap recently at Whole Foods, and it's a great Oktoberfest, I'm sure you will all enjoy it, even though no pumpkins were used in the production of this beer.
Our last pumpkin beer actually purchased for the lineup was Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale. Coincidentally, I just had it on tap in Delaware, and I can confirm that it's not too early for it. It's awesome. It's sweet, it's not as thick as it should be at 7%, and it goes great with any type of food. The DFH website is also awesome, has some good info for their beers, usually have videos of Sam Calagione talking a little history of the beers. This one is pretty neat, originally made for the Punkin Chunkin Championship, which has been broadcast the past couple years on Discovery. So this beer is now accompanied by rednecks and engineers alike, working together to build crazy machinery to see who can launch a pumpkin the furthest. As of writing this, it's only 59 days away.
Otter Creek's website is under construction. So is all of my banter about their Oktoberfest. Luckily, their face book page is up. That's Mike Gerhart on the left.
He used to brew at Dogfish. I made my Dad go there once on the tour, and I think at the time he was doing the distilling and brewing at the pub. He was also tending bar. He had some pretty crazy stories, and it was fun to go there, so we did... like three or four days in a row. His beard has always been that awesome. Now he's the head brewer at Otter Creek. So I bet this beer's good. Also, through the power of Google image, here is a tour down memory lane of some of the Oktoberfest label design.
There was another blog post about Pumpkin beers that I looked through from Weyerbacher. I didn't include it at the top, because it's really just a brewers blog about making beer. The comments are mildly interesting, so I include it here. I particularly like the one that says...
Imperial Pumpkin Ale is the best beer that I have ever had! It seriously is like an angel dancing on your tongue in heaven!Anyway, Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin has always been one of my favorites. They don't mess around with big beers, and this is no different. They have gone through a huge redesign of pretty much all of their marketing over the last 2 years, and I will always miss this guy...
But even though there is new packaging in town, this one is a staple pumpkin beer, and I always look for it around these 4-6 months that we're calling fall. It would probably taste like crap if it was made with pumpkins from Linvilla Orchard. There would be any way to filter all the dirt from the fields and the little kids running around there out of the beer.
And with that, I end Part 1 of the newsletter. I'll probably be back soon to finish up. Definitely before Halloween.
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