Pumpkin beers falling out of favor, but some still worth a try
Practically from the beginning, there were pumpkin beer haters.
Every year come fall it seems few beers provoke stronger emotions than pumpkin beers. That’s despite the fact that pumpkin beers — often, but not always ales — aren’t a style. They have long spanned a range of styles because, let’s face it, pumpkin is a relatively bland, starchy ingredient. When people think of pumpkin, they’re typically thinking about pumpkin spices. Brewers have long incorporated those spices into everything, from malty, amber ales, to heavily alcoholic bourbon barrel-aged stouts, to funky sour ales.
Even the pumpkin pie spices — cinnamon, nutmeg, clove and allspice — are polarizing. Sure, there’s a large enough contingent of pumpkin pie spice fans that Trader Joe’s has a few dozen pumpkin pie spice products ranging from biscotti to coffee to pumpkin seeds — yes you read that correctly; pumpkin seeds — to face masks. But pumpkin pie spices also have plenty of detractors. And, well, it turns out the haters won.
It was only a few short years ago that pumpkin beers were ubiquitous around this time of year. They dominated tap handles, grocery store end caps and liquor store shelves. And for good reason: They were what people wanted, which could explain why it seemed as though every brewery produced a pumpkin beer. A few years ago I wrote about how even the holdouts, such as Dan Kopman, co-founder of Schlafly Beer, and Steven Pauwels, brewmaster of Boulevard Brewing Co., gave up the fight and released pumpkin beers.
But tastes change. Demand isn’t what it used to be. And there are far fewer breweries producing pumpkin beers than there were just a few years ago. That’s why Boulevard stopped brewing Funky Pumpkin Spiced Sour Ale in 2017.
Pauwels, for one, doesn’t miss it. “It’s not hurting my feelings that we passed this stage,” he says.
That isn’t to say pumpkin beers are dead. In fact, some breweries, such as Energy City Brewing, are seeking to put a fresh spin on it. The Batavia, Illinoisbased brewery recently released Milkshake Pumpkin Spice, a hazy, milkshake IPA that’s brewed with pumpkin pie spices.
“Most pumpkin beers aren’t that exciting,” says David Files, the brewery’s owner and brewmaster. “We wanted to modernize them.”
The brewery is known for milkshake IPAs, a subcategory of the hazy or New England IPA, that are creamy, full-bodied, opaque and brewed with lactose (and often with fruit, vanilla and spices). And Files figured the style would provide a solid base for a beer that satisfies those who seek out a product like a pumpkin spice face mask. Adding in spices as he brewed, he sought to find the right balance.
The result was an “interesting” beer, he says.
“There’s a segment of drinkers who have really sought it out,” Files says. “There are more people contacting us (about) where they can find it. But there’s another segment who are never going to try it.”
And with more breweries producing more beers than ever before, those detractors have plenty of other options to drink.