Love Live the King!

It’s that time of year again: pumpkin beer!  Okay, fine, it’s been “that time of year” for about a month-&-a-half already.  Yeah yeah yeah, seasonal creep & all that - “You can’t drink pumpkin beers before fall”.  Next you’re going to tell me you can’t wear white after Labor Day.  Whether the ever-earlier release of fall seasonals has you cheering, booing, or just shrugging, it’s happening.  Pumpkin beers are, without a doubt, the most popular seasonal style out there, so no wonder there’s a race to get the suckers on the shelves.  Don’t shoot the merchant - we’re not on a mission to please the crotchety tweeters, bloggers, & facebookers (like yours truly) who cry “Too soon!” the minute the first snaggle-toothed jack-o-lantern is spotted on a label.  The brewers brew it, ship it to the distributors, & we order it because it’s there!  People love it, & we love giving people what they love.  If you’re that bent out of shape about not enjoying pumpkin beer before cool weather, buy it, shelve it, forget about it for a few months.  It’ll keep. 

Anyway, enough kvetching & onto the good stuff.  As exponentially as pumpkins’ popularity rises, there’s one standout whose demand is on an even steeper curve.  Each year, Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale, from Southern Tier Brewing, is on more & more people’s lips – in more ways than one.  When’s it coming out?  Who’s got it?  How much did they get in?  What’s a bottle going for?  It’s gotten that it’s broken through the craft ceiling & has become a phenomenon amongst the beer “commoners”.  I feel like such slime saying it like that, but it’s true – people who could give two shits about craft beer otherwise are onto it, & love it as much as anyone.  In the picture above, you’re looking at approximately 500 bottles of the stuff, & that’s not all of the supply we had.  And guess what?  It’s sold.  We’ve already sold all of that, in less than two weeks.  Why?  Because it’s delicious.  I’ve long been a fan of pumpkin beers, & while most are good, some okay, some lousy, this was & is the first one I’ve ever called great. 

Pumking has long intrigued me, & maybe has won its popularity, because I find it qualitatively different from other pumpkin beers.  Most vary in quantity…err, quantity of quality, if that makes any sense.  I mean that most pumpkin beers have some variation on a fairly predictable formula: some combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, in a brown or mildly malty base.  Some are good (e.g. Dogfish Head Punkin’, Brooklyn Post Road), others in the middle or bottom of that pack.  But most stick generally within that range, with the variable being how well they are made.  There’s something about Pumking that seems to really set it apart, very reminiscent of buttery graham cracker pie crust.  One tweeter disparagingly said it “tastes like buttered popcorn & sugar”, & while I disagree that this is a bad thing, the description is somewhat on.  Brown sugar maybe, but yeah.  There’s something there that really hits home & is more evocative than most other pumpkin beers, which is what I think sets Pumking ahead of the pack, for me at least.

The funny thing is that, my suspicion tells me, this is technically a flaw.  DO NOT QUOTE ME ON THIS, but my hunch is that Southern Tier intentionally allows the development of diacetyl in the beer to give it a buttery flavor.  Diacetyl is an organic compound that’s produced naturally by yeast – it’s what’s used to flavor margarine & oleo.  Normally the yeast “cleans it up” by basically sucking it back up at a certain point during fermentation, but it’s possible that the brewers permit it into the beer to give it a buttery or butterscotch flavor.  Diacetyl’s acceptable in a few styles, but  overall frowned upon in the beer world, & Pumking may have capitalized on it in a huge way.  Again, I’m just speculating & mean in no way to libel Southern Tier, but it’s been a theory of mine for a while.

On the note of “qualitatively different” pumpkin beers, sure there are some outliers.  There’s the pumpkin pilsners put out by Elysian & Rock Bottom.  There’s La Parcela from Jolly Pumpkin, essentially a funky wild ale made with pumpkin spices.  I’m sure there exist pumpkin made with just pumpkins & sans spices…mmm.  Those may be some interesting experiments, but are far enough afield that it’s doubtful they’ll catch the eye of the mainstream of craft.  Pumking remains the pick of the patch for me, & it’s clear that a lot of folks out there agree.  If you missed it in bottles, we’ve got it on draft, & will likely see more bottles.  Love live the king!