PUMPKIN BEER

Or What we call at 822

Punkin Beer

You know it's autumn when this festive specialty beer is placed on the shelves

I've tried them all and this is my favorite

I even have glasses to match my beer

 always freezing in the freezer...because they are 

CUTE!

&

YUM!

The best kind of TGIF includes

a fire in the firepit, football, snackipoos and an ice cold

pumpkin beer!

via google

The History Via Google

Pumpkin beer first became popular as a major component in colonial cups of "flip"—

a standard drink throughout the colonies that mixed rum, beer, and sugar. The 

reason for the mix was simple - those items were much more easily found in early 

America than things needed to produce a more sophisticated brew.

But why use pumpkins instead of malt to make beer? Again the answer was one of 

practicality. Pumpkin was adopted simply because of availability. It is a native 

American plant. In fact it was completely unknown to most Europeans before the 

16th century. On the other hand, good malt was not so readily accessible—

fermentable sugars had to be found where they could, and in the first pumpkin beers, 

the meat of the pumpkin took the place of malt entirely.

Pumpkin's great asset in early America was its versatility. It could be used to make 

good tasting beer, bread, custards, sauce, molasses, vinegar, and, on thanksgiving 

day, pies, as a substitute for what the Puritans said was the "unholy" minced pie.

Here is a method of making pumpkin beer dated to 1771, from the American 

Philosophical Society, Philadelphia::

Receipt for Pompion (Pumpkin) Ale: Let the Pompion be beaten in a Trough and 

pressed as Apples. The expressed Juice is to be boiled in a Copper a considerable Time 

and carefully skimmed that there may be no Remains of the fibrous Part of the Pulp. After 

that Intention is answered let the Liquor be hopped cooled fermented as Malt Beer. 

NOTE-There is no cinnamon, no nutmeg, no malt; it's getting sugars for yeast to 

metabolize from the flesh of the fruit. Hard-up colonists used all sorts of ingreients for 

these sugars, including pumpkin, parsnips, molasses, cornstalks, and more.

Pumpkin beer continued to be a staple throughout the 18th century but its popularity 

began to wane by the early 19th century as the pumpkin itself began to be viewed as 

something quaint and rustic. Further pushing the pumpkin to the brewer's outhouse 

was the new easy access to quality malts thanks to more and more local farmers 

growing it as a cash crop. Pumpkin beer made an aborted entry to brewing as a 

flavoring agent by the mid 1800s but it failed to catch on with the beer drinking 

masses.

Today's pumpkin beers have little in common with their colonial ancestors. Instead of 

tasting pumpkins, modern versions give you 'pumpkin pie in a glass. Many seem to 

use an overbundance of spices such as nutmeg and cloves to cover up the fact that 

they've brewed a very mediocre beer without any real pumpkin as a main ingredents.

Generally speaking, pumpkin ale can be found on store shelves from September 

through November and the more popular bottles tend to sell out quickly as it does on 

draft at bars and restaurants throughout the fall. But where did the notion of reviving 

pumpkin beer originate?

The honor is claimed by Buffalo Bill's Brewery, which has been making their 

America's Original Pumpkin Beer since the late 1980s, using one of George 

Washington's recipes as an inspiration. Although the experimental batches used 

pumpkin as an ingredient, the commercial version stuck with pumpkin pie spices 

instead though they now make an Imperial Pumpkin Ale with some actual pumpkin.