Get Fall Started With a Pumpkin Beer

Fall officially begins tomorrow, and along with cooler weather, hoodies, bonfires and foliage comes what is perhaps the best thing about Autumn: Pumpkin Beer!

And while I’ve only known about pumpkin beers for a year or so, it turns out they’re an old American original. Apparently, in colonial America, the malts used in traditional beers were hard to find and difficult to grow. However, pumpkins, a native crop here, were readily available! In a case of good ol’ American ingenuity, colonists just replaced malt with pumpkin meat, creating the world’s first pumpkin beers.

And I’m seriously grateful they did. Pumpkins went in and out of style since the 17th century, but modern craft brewers nationwide have revived the familiar orange gourd as a beer ingredient.

For me, pumpkin beer ranks right up there with cool breezes, football and Halloween as reasons that Fall is the best season. And I know this might be beer drinker blasphemy, but I think I slightly prefer them to the Octoberfest beers we get to enjoy this season.

I’ll end my pumpkin rant with one of America’s first folk songs:

Instead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies,
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies;
We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon;
If it was not for pumpkins we should be undone
… Hey down, down, hey down derry down….
If barley be wanting to make into malt
We must be contented and think it no fault
For we can make liquor, to sweeten our lips,
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips!

Credit and much thanks to Passion Brews for pointing this out to me, and Kegworks and Serious Eats for the info

Pumpkin photo courtesy of Rich Bowen