Pumpkin Beer Trend

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“I decided if we were going to make one, we were going to make a big one,” he said. For each batch of Imperial, he blends 30 big, restaurant-size cans of pumpkin puree with enough malt for a full-bore 8 percent strong ale. All that pumpkin makes a beer that’s bright orange, and the spice leaps out at you.

I’m not the only one who likes it. Weirback says the beer has sold out in the first year he offered it, in 2005. He tripled production to 1,680 cases in 2006 and sold out again. This year, he had double that amount in pre-orders from his wholesalers and despite having made about 30 percent more, he says, “We’ll be out of it before the end of October.”

If you need more evidence, just glance at some numbers: BeerAdvocate, a beer-enthusiast website, lists 157 pumpkin beers. Or you can rely on a sure indicator of beer “hotness,” the presence of big brewers in a niche.

Anheuser-Busch introduced Jack’s Pumpkin Spice Ale in 2005 and has brought it out each autumn since. Coors brews Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale as part of its Blue Moon line. It’s been doing so since 1996, despite Blue Moon’s initial low sales. Now that pumpkin beer has caught on, the company’s looking pretty smart.

But pumpkin’s a mess for brewers; even canned pumpkin puts a lot of fiber and color in the system. The spices can ruin a brewery’s plastic beer lines used in the beermaking process, flavoring every beer that comes after them. No one wants to disappoint the pumpkin zombies, though, and it does make a nice treat in the season and something fun for Halloween. (View slideshow.)

I’ve come to look forward to a pint of pumpkin beer each autumn. I don’t sit at the bar and have three slices of pie in a glass; that’s too much. But if the leaves fall and I don’t get my glass of pumpkin beer, something’s just not right.

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