You know it’s fall when pumpkin beers begin popping up on taps and store shelves.
The first modern pumpkin beer was brewed by Buffalo Bill’s Brewpub in Hayward, beginning in the 1980s. It’s still around, but with so many other breweries making pumpkin beers of their own, it’s not the
powerhouse it once was.
Like Buffalo Bill’s, the typical pumpkin beer is an amber ale brewed with fresh roasted pumpkin and spiced with cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg. Nowadays, with so many options on the shelf, brewers have found new ways to brew with pumpkins and spices.
While these are generally malty beers, with very little hop bitterness, pumpkin ales no longer all taste the same. Even Buffalo Bill’s released a variation last year: a Black Pumpkin Oatmeal Stout in a 22-ounce bottle that was quite tasty, mixing the roasted malt with spicy pumpkin flavors.
To help navigate the pumpkin beer patch, here are five options to enjoy this fall.
1 Dogfish Head Punkin Ale: This is probably my favorite pumpkin beer. The Dogfish Head version starts as a brown ale with pumpkin, brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg. It’s heavily spiced, but it’s the brown sugar that comes through in this nicely complex beer.
2 Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin: Once available only in bottles, this year it’s debuting in four-packs of 16-ounce cans. This easy-drinking beer features pumpkin and nutmeg, and its overall profile is malty sweet, with wheat in the grain bill for increased smoothness.
3 Rogue Farms Pumpkin Patch: Rogue packages its pumpkin beer in a bright orange 750-ml bottle, so it stands out (there’s a limited-edition black bottle, too). Rogue grows its own pumpkins in Oregon, and uses modest spices, so more of the pumpkin flavor comes through and the orange peel, cardamom and other spices serve more as an accent.
4 Anderson Valley Pinchy Jeek Barl: This one may be a little harder to find because it’s a limited edition beer. Anderson Valley took its sweet caramel pumpkin ale and aged it for six months in Wild
Turkey bourbon barrels, which adds some wonderful complexity, as well as hints of vanilla and coconut.
5 Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Harvest Ale: Brewmaster James Costa originally created Pumpkin Harvest Ale for Half Moon Bay’s beloved Art & Pumpkin Festival, but the beer has taken on a life of its own as one of the Bay Area’s most popular pumpkin beers. Available in 22-ounce bottles, this amber ale is brewed with more than 700 pounds of locally-grown, roasted Sugar Pie pumpkins and a secret spice blend. Check out the 48th annual Art & Pumpkin Festival Oct. 13-14, and you can sample the ale along with several other pumpkin beers and pumpkin-infused food and drinks. Find details at pumpkinfest.miramarevents.com.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.
