Hoppy Halloween

October 31, 9:12 PMSF Craft Beer ExaminerBrian Yaeger

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Drive down any country road and you’re guaranteed to breeze past a stupid number of pumpkin patches. But really, how many of these festive, tasty gourds are destined to become Jack-o-lanterns?  And finer yet, how many are privileged enough to get baked into pumpkin pie? It seems more and more are finding their final resting places in the best of all possible worlds—brewed into pumpkin beers.

Gleaned from Charlie Papazian, our National Beer Examiner, pumpkin ales are the best selling seasonal beer, which, as a category, is the best-selling style of beer.

The best pumpkin beer, IMHO, and please note this is the first and last time you’ll ever catch the SF Craft Beer Examiner using that phrase, is the one you brew yourself. But we can’t all be Nate Poell, the innovator of the Pumpkin-Ale-Brewed-Inside-a-Pumpkin (left).

Heck, we can’t all be O’Fallon Brewery (from near St. Louis) either, who had the devilish idea of tapping their Pumpkin Ale via an actual pumpkin (right).

While the pumpkin beers pictured (below) are the ones I’ll be serving at my Thanksgiving dinner, the only one procured and available in the Bay Area, I’m afraid (what would we give to have Southern Tier’s Pumking and other fine beers at the ready?), is not even a pumpkin beer but The Bruery’s Autumn Maple brewed with maple syrup, molasses, and yams. Other fine examples of this style that are distributed locally include Elysian’s Night Owl and Dogfish Head’s Punk’in.

So go nuts, go out of your gourd, over in the Castro tonight. And when you’re in need of a little hair of the werewolf tomorrow, reach for Halloween’s tastiest trick and treat.

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© 2009 by Brian Yaeger