Pumpkin Ales

photo: Eric Diesel

I am honored to report that Urban Home Blog has regular readers, some of whom have been following since the launch and some of whom come aboard each time a new column publishes. During this month of Thanksgiving, I take a moment to express my gratitude to readers. Thank you for doing me the honor of reading my words. Thank you for supporting me with comments, clicks, recommendations and retweets. Thank you for trusting me enough to send me homekeeping questions via social media. Sometimes these simply require a quick answer, which I am always happy to share. Sometimes these turn into assignments, such as the decorating gig over the summer that I mentioned in the Labor Day decorating column. Sometimes they turn into columns, such an early reader who asked a laundry room question that turned into one of the first Urban Home columns.

Regular readers are used to reading about the pumpkin’s role as official mascot of autumn. Halloween isn’t scary or complete without a jack o’lantern, while the Thanksgiving centerpiece showcases an architectural arrangement of gourds. Shades of orange, especially this dark saturated tone, are a constant in the décor of our urban home. Used judiciously, orange dashes around rooms to simultaneously invigorate and ground them. I don’t write as much about gardening as I should, but in the northeast, along with apple orchards, pumpkin patches are autumn’s top weekend destinations. This year I have noticed an explosion in the variety of groceries showcasing pumpkin, but in our urban kitchen, it has long been a seasonal ingredient of choice. Beyond its leading role on the Thanksgiving pie board, we have folded pumpkin into cheesecake, sealed its butter in jars and poured it into our coffee cups. We haven’t even published all of the recipes we utilize for showcasing this versatile ingredient, including pumpkin risotto, ravioli, curry and ice cream. But Lou Siebert Pappas has published many of them, in her wonderful slim cookbook devoted to squashes.

One annual ritual without which the season would be incomplete is the appearance of pumpkin ale. These brews, which range in color from pale amber to deep russet and in flavor from toasty and malty to spicy and sweet, have evolved from a devoted cult to a booming seasonal business. This is in part due to the craft beer movement, which, though far from a new phenomenon, has redoubled its influence in recent years. Beer aficionados, demanding the respect for their quaff of choice that is accorded wine or coffee, have built communities around the appreciation of beer. Any foodie or entrepreneur (sometimes we’re both) will confirm that, when a determined audience organizes itself around a cultural occurrence, a cultural force can emerge. In food and drink, provided that all of the players can harness and sustain the resources of finance and interest, this typically splits into two primary thoroughfares for production: mass and artisanal. And that is what the craft beer movement is about: appreciating and advancing the efforts of craft breweries, which make beers with an attention to method, quality and history that have believers hoisting a mug to the power of small business.

No beer was more ready to move to the full, foamy head of the glass as a result of the craft beer movement than pumpkin ale. This brew, which was known to, opinionated about and hoarded by a small, devoted sub-sect, has become as ubiquitous this time of year as candy corn. Though pumpkin ale is in its renaissance, for a long time it was brewed mostly by home brewers and a handful of breweries. This was a bump in the country road of pumpkin ale’s history. In colonial times, pumpkin was a common addition to the mash from which beer is brewed. In fact, pumpkin’s indigenous availability on the North American continent versus the relative challenges of growing malt often meant that pumpkin outright replaced malt in the mash. Pumpkin beer was a common pour at the tavern, and a common ingredient in tavern specialties by the glass, notably a flip, a “tonic” that also included rum, brown sugar and, one extrapolates, space on a cot in the back. Its historic significance is part of the reason that pumpkin beer found itself rescued by the craft beer movement. That, and the taste.

When I first started drinking pumpkin ale, in order to obtain it, you had to have a source for it. This was so long ago that I still lived in Brooklyn, and in my case, this was a tavern that would sell a sixer to a customer in the know. Nowadays, a quick internet search yields hundreds of varieties of pumpkin ale. These range from brews so deeply local and cultish they are only available on tap in specific taverns to the big brewery varieties that appear on supermarket and state store shelves this time of year.

The pumpkin patch is so crowded with brews that it is a challenge to know which are worthy of your tankard. Here are my recommendations from this year’s crop of pumpkin ales. Though I’ve tasted some marvelous small-batch craft ales, for this column I have concentrated on brews that should be easy to obtain for readers of legal drinking age. While wine is always a welcome guest at the Thanksgiving dinner table (for Urban Home’s list of turkey-friendly favorites, click here), consider inviting a few bottles of the below. Finally, no innkeeper would be surprised to hear it but readers might be: pumpkin ales are almost always better with food. Aside from Thanksgiving dinner, try them with snacks warmed with spice – one such is Urban Home’s own recipe for curried popcorn. Individuals with a sweet tooth will be pleased to learn that pumpkin beer agrees with sweets, including what’s left of the Halloween candy.

Supermarket shoppers have gotten used to sighting the distinctive black and orange six pack as a harbinger of autumn, but it is what’s in a bottle of Brooklyn Brewery Post Road Pumpkin Ale that makes it a perennial large-batch favorite. This low-foam brew quickly reveals a dominant note of sweet-hot spices, with toasty hops mellowing just as quickly as context. To some, the powerful spice profile equals points deducted, but I credit this ale for the strength of the spice notes as well as for the comfort of the cushion they rest on. I also credit it with being one of the beers that led to the pumpkin ale renaissance and that, to this day, exemplifies it. Yes, there are pumpkin ales with more complicated flavor profiles, more artisanal approaches, more devoted followers, etc., but there is none that is more honest – and that is the very essence of ale.

Tasters’ opinions are invariably split over Southampton Publick House Pumpkin Ale. Drinkers who like it cite its noticeable pumpkin flavor while those who dislike it cite a burnt aftertaste. I credit the latter with the dark characteristic of this ale, which will not be unfamiliar or unpleasant to devotees of old-world ales -- of all of the ales on the list, it is the one you can most easily imagine an innkeeper pouring into a pewter tankard. While the ale is pure, it does tussle with the pumpkin-spice profile. If this were a wine, tasters would cite it as “jammy.” We’re dealing with beer and pumpkins, so let us agree to cite the corresponding quality as “buttery,” understanding that to some quaffers this will be an advantage. This beer is generated by a historic Long Island tavern long revered for its hospitality, so let us agree that in that context, it’s allowable, even poetic, for them to bottle a pumpkin beer whose defining quality is its journey down the middle road.

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale is a complex beer which skirts the debate over grains versus pumpkin versus spices by forging unity between the three. Like the Southampton, tasters either enjoy or dismiss this light, flavorful ale. I find it affable in the glass, with a welcoming quality that encourages the opening of a second bottle. Its warm, friendly character evokes the autumn leaves and covered bridges of its New Hampshire homeland. Yankees are known as a crisp, crusty species, but this ale embodies the warm spirit of Yankee welcome that lurks behind the iron bolts of all of those Colonial doors. I, for one, can't discount an ale so reflective of its hidebound roots, for accord within roughness is one of the secrets of living in this landscape that is never more beautiful than in the autumn.

Autumn on the other side of the country is captured in a distinctive brown bottle tellingly detailed after a compass. Uinta Brewing Company Punk’n Harvest Ale comes from a craft brewery in Utah known for an equal reverence for good beer and good stewardship. Perhaps it is the pioneer spirit of the Western landscape that impels them to brew and bottle with such a damn-it-all attitude, and perhaps it is my pioneer spirit as a transplanted Westerner that makes their pumpkin ale one of my two favorites on this list. This extremely interesting ale unfolds with a strong core of pumpkin and a light touch with the spice, and is then cut right down the middle with a Pacific logjam of cedar and balsam on the finish. The herbal profile – especially executed so well -- arguably elevates this beer out of the realm of pumpkin ales and into a new territory. If that’s not pioneer, I don’t know what is.

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale is a craft enthusiast favorite. Notes from caramel to molasses dog the punkin in this ale, which lands with a noticeable punkin middle and a bouquet of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove that is, in fact, not far from pumpkin pie. Some deduct points for that, but I find this complex beer to be charismatic. The flavors are strong and autumnal, as befits a season that starts with an equinox and progresses through frights to gratitude. Along with the Uinta, this full-bodied is ale my favorite from these tastings. That said, I should note that some tasters cite a soapy flavor to this ale. I don’t experience that, but the dark, hoppy quality of the ale interacting with the strong spice profile could produce that response in people who have the genetic sensitivity to cardamom or cilantro.

Woodchuck Special Reserve Pumpkin Cider is not a craft ale but a limited production cider. By the glass, I would stick to Woodchuck’s established and no less autumnal formulations, especially their spectacular autumn and granny smith apple ciders. On its own, I found the pumpkin cider to be harsh, even disorienting. However, something about the pumpkin cider teased my mind (was this the wood that the woodchuck was attempting to chuck by brewing a pumpkin cider to begin with?) Following what was either a hunch or a prompting, I composed one of my favorite autumn drinks with this pumpkin cider. Accordingly I am pleased to announce, with an evening’s worth of research to back it up, that a Snakebite made with Woodchuck Special Reserve Pumpkin is a special squashy and slithery treat, and is the new standard for this drink in our urban home. Now we just need to come up with a name for it. A Squashed Snake? A Pumpkin Bite?