You know fall has arrived when pumpkin beer begins appearing on store shelves. If you love pumpkins, that will be great news — if not, give them a try anyway. How better to celebrate Halloween, the biggest keg weekend of the year, than with a beer that tastes like liquid pumpkin pie?
Here’s what else to look for:
New brews: As the weather changes, breweries begin releasing heftier beers, often with big flavors to complement autumn’s cooler temperatures. A fun one is the newest Lagunitas entry in its One-Hitter series: Willetized Coffee Stout, a coffee stout aged in Willet rye whiskey barrels. Also still available: The Eroica Ale, another One-Hitter, which starts with a traditional Flemish farmouse ale, ages it in oak wine barrels, then adds brettanomyces yeast to funkify it. It’s a sour saison — sort of. Whatever you call it, it’s worth drinking.
Meanwhile Firestone Walker Brewing is releasing Mocha Merlin, a variation on the brewery’s Velvet Merlin. The new beer is brewed with a Colombia La Granadilla coffee blend from San Luis Obispo’s HoneyCo Coffee Roasters and cacoa nibs from Ghana. The brewery also recently released its Luponic Distortion 007, the latest in its experimental, rotating-hop series. This beer, available in 16-ounce cans, uses three kinds of hops from Australia.
Wet hops: Autumn is also a season for fresh or wet hop beer, brewed with hops taken from bine to kettle, without being processed or dried first. Fresh hop beers are typically only available on draft, but Sierra Nevada Brewing has just released a mixed four-pack of fresh hop beers in cans that includes Fresh Hop IPA, Fresh Hop Double IPA, Fresh Hop IPL and Fresh Hop Session IPA.
Beer fests: If you’re a homebrewer or interested in trying that pastime, here’s a great way to learn more about the popular hobby. Heretic Brewing Co. brewmaster Jamil Zainasheff has never forgotten his homebrewing roots. Now he’s hosting an American Homebrewers Association Rally and Wort Give Away from 1-4 p.m. Oct. 21 at the Fairfield brewery. Rsvp via the AHA Rally site at bit.ly/HereticHomebrew.
Mark your calendar for Nov. 11, too, when Hayward’s 12th annual Barrel-Aged Beer Festival showcases more than 60 barrel-aged brews. The festival will run from 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. at The Bistro (the-bistro.com).
Last hurrah: We’ve celebrated so many new Bay Area brewery openings since the microbrewing renaissance took off in the 1980s. But sadly, breweries do close from time to time. Among them: Oakland’s 29-year-old Pacific Coast Brewing, which will close its doors in early November. That means you still have a couple of weeks to stop by and have a farewell pint at the historic brewpub.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com. Read more craft beer coverage at www.mercurynews.com/tag/beer.
