Halloween is approaching and, beyond candy and questionable costume choices, another seasonal occurrence is the orange cases of pumpkin beer that pile up on store floors. As I perused the selections, I began thinking about the history of pumpkin beer, a controversial topic for beer purists. It just so happens that 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the first commercially produced pumpkin beer, which predates the introduction of Starbucks’ pumpkin-spice lattes.
The drink’s history is so rich that the Smithsonian keeps a pumpkin beer draft handle in its collection. Bill Owens, the founder of Buffalo Bill’s Brewery in Hayward, California sent me a photo of it. Forty years ago, he bottled the first pumpkin ale. The brewery closed in 2022, but Owens, who is now 88, has stayed in the game and he’s a media-savvy guy. He has a Substack and is a decorated photojournalist, having published 1973’s award-winning Suburbia, a collection of black and white photos capturing life in a Bay Area suburb. Over the years, Owens has shared the origin story of how he was inspired by George Washington, as America’s first president was a beer fan. In a historical account from a notebook from 1757, Washington mentions making beer with pumpkins. The enslaved brewed beer at Mount Vernon, and a low-alcohol, “small beer,” was served to guests, children, paid servants, along with the enslaved. Though some have glorified the founding father’s love of beer, it was the enslaved and indentured servants who were charged with the actual beer making.
Four decades ago, Owens took pumpkin beer brewing matters into his own hands. He grew pumpkins in his garden and designated an 80-pound specimen. He mashed it and boiled it, leaving it to ferment for seven days. The result was a traditional bland amber. To solve this dilemma, Owens stopped at a nearby grocery store and picked up a can of pumpkin pie spice. He deposited the spice into a coffee percolator to create three cups of pumpkin-flavored water, which he dumped into the beer: “You stir it up, and lo and behold, you have pumpkin ale,” says Owens.
The first batch of Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale yielded about 10 cases. It took off from there. Owens says he sent a few letters to breweries who copied his idea. The pumpkin craze was so prevalent, Owens even recalls a farmer friend stopping by to pick up leftover pumpkin mash for his pigs who were tired of eating barley. Unlike today, Owens says they brewed four to five batches and kept it on tap until December when Christmas beers took the spotlight.
“We could do 1,000 bottles in about three hours, but I could never get the money together to expand to do a bottling line,” Owens says.
The Smithsonian National Museum in 2018 displayed one of Buffalo Bill’s pumpkin draft beer handles when it recognized the brewpub, which was founded in 1983, as one of America’s first post-Prohibition brewpubs. Unlike breweries, brewpubs serve both beer made on premises and food. Prohibition ended in 1933, but state and federal laws didn’t allow for this business model. Grant’s Brewery Pub, opened in 1982 in Yakima, Washington, was the first to break through.
Beer purists who don’t care for adjuncts. Added flavors (like fruit purees and spices) aren’t drawn to pumpkin ale. “It's one of those beers that you serve to somebody, and they say, ‘Wow, that's really something, and that's really good,’” Chuck Skypeck of the Boulder, Colorado-based Brewers Association says. “And then they buy something else.”
Skypeck serves as the association’s technical brewing projects director, supporting breweries with whatever resources they need. The Brewers Association is the non-profit behind the Great American Beer Festival, which is taking place this weekend. The association doesn’t track stats of individual styles of beer, but anecdotally, Skypeck says he sees more attention surrounding Oktoberfest lagers versus pumpkin ales.
However, John Laffler, co-founder of Off Color Brewing in Chicago, asks who any of us are to criticize pumpkin beer fans who, much like their coffee counterparts, can’t get enough of sweater weather. But pumpkin ales aren’t about the overspiced items peddled to Americans in lattes, pastries, and candles during the fall. Traditional pumpkin beer isn’t light; the starch is filling. Pumpkins weren’t just replacements; brewers couldn’t find malt, says Skypeck. Pumpkin, abundantly available in the New World, was mashed up and often used in place of malt in colonial America, roasted to provide body.
The pumpkin ale explosion hit before Starbucks PSL mania, which started in 2003. The beer trend exploded in bars. Highlights include the first brewing of Milton, Delaware’s Dogfish Head’s Punkin Ale in 1994, when it won first place in what was at the time a very small “punkin chunkin” contest, and went into production the next year. . Seattle’s Elysian Brewing followed in 1997 with Great Pumpkin. Lakewood, New York’s Southern Tier Brewing waited to roll out Pumpking in 2007. Pumpking was a turning point for breweries. “Looking at those sales numbers, we’re like, ‘hey, how can we do that?’” Laffler says.
Those beers prompted every dude with a beard, flannel shirt, and a basement to start to make homebrews from a flood of recipes circulating around the web. The Brewers Association recognized the trend 10 years ago. The association issues guidelines for nearly every beer — from IPA to strong ale to gluten-free. Skypeck describes the evolution of the festival’s categories as a living document that reflects both current tastes and traditions. This also aids breweries in knowing which category to enter their beers in, in their quests to earn a medal at the festival. In 2016, the association introduced “Pumpkin Spice Beer,” a new category to recognize beers that use spices like cinnamon, allspice, clove, and nutmeg. The grouping complements the original “Pumpkin/Squash” category, which is more in line with the unspiced concoctions colonial Americans made.
Skypeck says most pumpkin ales don’t use much pumpkin in their mash. Laffler warns drinkers to check the label. Some pumpkin beers won’t use pumpkins. “It is generally a blend of various squashes,” he says.
Although it’s not even mid-October, Off Color is already finished with pumpkin beer season, going through all of its Pumpkin Beer for Cafés, an ale inspired by chai lattes (which is different from masala chai, and yes, the distinction matters). That includes all of autumnal Americana with cinnamon, vanilla, and nutmeg. Annually, they make about 60 to 80 barrels. At pumpkin beer’s peak, that would make twice as much. Laffler says breweries brew the beer months before spooky season, needing to get their supplies to distributors by July to ensure the bottles reach stores in time.
Owens doesn’t have an itch to sample a pumpkin ale this year. He didn’t even grow a pumpkin in his garden. “Pumpkin beer is probably in the same boat as most of our most of the other styles of craft beer brewers are brewing, which is, you know, is in a bit of a decline,” says Skypeck.
Still, grocery stores continue to pile up cases of pumpkin beer alongside their candy and apple displays. And even though Starbucks, as a whole, is struggling and closing stores, PSL fans continue to crowd coffee shops. In 2021, stores started selling a pumpkin variant of Bud Light Seltzer with flavors of pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla. The ingredient label blurs what is actually used to make the drink, opting for the all-too-popular “natural flavor.”
“That is just how big beer works, it’s also how some of small beer works, too,” Laffler says. “Can't lie about that.”
Bird Droppings
🐦⬛ Restaurants are using AI-powered call bots to take orders over the phone. Now, a new company, called Bites, wants to steal customers from third-party delivery services like DoorDash with a ChatGPT-powered interface to take orders, reports the Verge. This will all end well, right?
🐦⬛ Ravenous is a fan of evidence-based medicine. Another organization that supports research, the American Academy of Pediatrics, is calling for a ban on the sale and distribution of raw milk. Nine states in the last two years have reported outbreaks of pathogenic diseases linked to dairy, according to ProPublica.
🐦⬛ Last week, we reported on former Obama private chef and White House advisor Sam Kass receiving the Julia Child Award. The honor was given at the Obama Center in Chicago. The center’s workers are unionizing, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
🐦⬛ I try to regularly pick up a bottle of Palestinian olive oil from Middle East Bakery & Grocery in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood. It’s a luxury for me, but a livelihood and cultural symbol to others. Mondoweiss reports that the war in Gaza is destroying the olive oil crops.
