Well, You’re A Little Early

There I was, working online, checking emails and I see the note that Foothills Oktoberfest and Cottonwood Pumpkin ale will be available tomorrow. For a moment, I sighed and smiled, thinking of crackling fires, colorful leaves, cool breezes, and all things fall. Then reality quickly set in and I look down at the corner of my screen … July 26. I’m serious … it was July. It was 94 degrees outside.
As the end of the month arrived, I got an email that the first shipment of Southern Tier’s Pumpking, the brewery’s monster fall seasonal Imperial release, a beer of 8.6 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), rich, sweet flavors and spicy, mouth-filling cold weather goodness, was also on shelves. It was still July.
The pumpkin, so beloved when associated with Halloween, in jack-o-lantern form and being Great with the Peanuts Gang, and so delicious along with Thanksgiving, in the pie variety, is a great American icon. These relationships are near and dear to me, and it was the rise of pumpkin beers that served as one of the many movements that endeared craft beer to my being.
Something you have to realize about me is that pumpkin beers are one of my favorite styles of seasonal beer, if not one of my snobby beloved kinds of beer period. The caveat here is that, of all the seasonal beers, maybe beers in general, pumpkin ale is the one I get sick of the fastest! No other style of beer do I anticipate so highly and tire of so rapidly as the orange gordo ale.
I don’t know if it’s the overload of spices after a summer’s pale ales, IPAs, pilsners, and wheat beers. I’m not sure if it has something to do with the finicky fall weather and these rich, sweetish beers are just too much for the hot September days in the south? Maybe it’s an evolved mechanism in humans that one should only have so much pumpkin, lest you turn into one. Whatever is going on, I get my fill quickly.
And herein lies my problem — not only are more breweries releasing their own version of the style, but they are all making more of the product than the previous year. During the first full week of August alone, I visited my local bottle shop. I recorded 12, (that’s right a dozen) pumpkin beers already available before the first week of the month had ended. I’m not kidding, I wrote them down:
New Holland Ichabod, Terrapin Pumpkinfest, Uinta Punk’n, Weyerbacker Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Blue Moon Harvest Ale, New Belgium Pumpkick, Southern Tier Pumking, Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat, Cottonwood Pumpkin Ale, Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale, Ace Hard Pumpkin Cider, and Timmerman’s Pumpkin Lambicus. Seriously, it’s mid-August, the dead heat of summer.
This is why I’m standing by Rogue Ales from Newport, Ore. Rogue Ales will release their pumpkin beer during pumpkin season. Rogue Farms Pumpkin Patch Ale is the beer, and “because no canned pumpkins, purees or concentrates are used in the brew, the Ale will be available on taps and shelves sometime in October. It’s worth the wait,” says Rogue brewmaster, John Maier
Some might say, what’s the problem? And, sure, I love the fall seasonals, and winter and Christmas beers are some of my favorites too. But the crisp summer offerings mean sunshine, something we still have plenty of in the South. Seasonals are one of the great things about being a drinker of quality beer. At different times of year, as temperatures and weather changes, you have the excitement of the arrival of special beers. It’s something to look forward to all year long.
So, if you are like me and prefer to enjoy the variety of seasonal during the, you know, actual season, remember, its still summer. Enjoy the summer brews … Cheers.
 
Gene’s Haufbrau has at more than 200 beers in bottles or on tap. While they don’t have every beer the Beer Snob writes about, they probably have most. Gene’s is located at 817 Savannah Hwy. 225-GENE. E-mail the Beer Snob at publisher@westof.net.