The ultimate pumpkin beer – photo story

Pumpkin beerIf a picture is worth a thousand words then 27 photos (at flickr) might be worth a million.

The Interstellar Galactic Brewery team carved one pumpkin to create a mash tun, then fermented in another.

What could be cooler? A three-tier pumpkin system, I guess. And maybe one in which the lid didn’t collapse into the beer during fermentation. Looks as if they might end up with a wild pumpkin beer.

The search for a definition of beer terroir continues, but this could be part of it.

Thanks to Eric Trimmer at Trouble Brewing for spotting this.

Anything but cloves

Pumpkin beers seem to be bigger than ever this year. Almost any liquor store I walk into has a large display with six-packs stacked to eye level.

But this headline: Anything but cloves sums things up nicely.

This week’s On Draft started as a comparison of pumpkin ales, but after five brews, I decided that pumpkin pie spice was the patchouli of the food world. How anyone can tolerate such toxic levels of clove and nutmeg in their beer is beyond me. Pumpkin is just a wee category of fall beers, anyway, so I decided to broaden my horizons.

In the end, though, the author does recommend a Pumpkin beer: Elysian Brewing Co. Night Owl Pumpkin Ale, a reminder that it doesn’t hurt to keep sampling and that the best choice could be a beer at your local brewpub.