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Pumpkin flavor is everywhere. It probably started with Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes, but then exploded over the last few years with pumpkin flavored everything. They’ll pumpkin spice literally anything. No gas, Trader Joe’s is selling pumpkin spiced pumpkin seeds! That’s like chicken flavored chicken! Coffee flavored coffee beans! It’s outrageous, egregious, preposterous.
Beer has not left itself out of the party. From Shipyard to Harpoon and beyond, it seems like any self-respecting brewery has a pumpkin beer. I guess we’ll call this “The PSL Effect.” Whether the beer just gets post-production pumpkin flavoring or the more refined production of brewing it with real pumpkin, all pumpkin beers vie for love come fall. Well, actually mid-August, but you get the idea. People guzzle this stuff, but is it even any good?
According to the judges at the Great American Beer Festival, the answer is no, because the top two medals in the pumpkin/squash beer category were not awarded.
Per Paste:
The awards philosophy for the Great American Beer Festival states that medals are only given when they’re deserved, which means that most years have at least one category that doesn’t get three winners. Bronzes go out to beers that exemplify the style with minor deviations, but silver and gold are held to a much higher standard. Despite having 10 entries in the new category of Pumpkin or Squash beer, judges awarded a bronze for Butt-Ah Nut by BTU Brasserie in Portland, Ore., but nothing else.
This is not a good look for pumpkin. Like, at all. And in third place it went to a squash beer. SQUASH! Who the hell is drinking squash beer? Nobody. But somehow it’s pulling medals like Aly Raisman (shouts to my girl), and pumpkin’s got it’s stem between its legs. Just can’t even get on the podium like the men’s 4×100 relay team.
There’s a separate “pumpkin spice” category because, well, The PSL Effect, and all three medals were awarded in that category, so not all was lost for pumpkin. But still, losing to squash in the straight up pumpkin category just proves that sometimes adding pumpkin doesn’t make it better.
You can check out the winners from all 96 categories at The Great American Beer Festival. .
Image via Shutterstock
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Boston Max
Spending my retirement fund at Trader Joe's and trying to remember to check my mailbox semi-regularly
@BostonMaxG
@boston_maxg
This may be an unpopular opinion, but who gives a shit what some beer snob douchebags think and who cares about awards? If it tastes good to you, drink it. If it doesnt taste good, dont. Its that simple. I could not care less how many IBUs a beer has or how many awards its won, if i dont like the taste, im not drinking it. Also, for what its worth, New Belgium’s “Pumpkick” is good.
I think people already follow this practice.
I would hope so, but using GABF, or any award for that matter, as a standard for whats “good beer” and “bad beer” is just pretentious and unnecessary.
Lancaster Baked is the best pumpkin beer I’ve had… and I’ve had a lot.
Remember that time you were doing seasonal beer reviews. Yeah, me too. Get back to your liver desecration, please! It’s for the kids.
‘Member when Shibby did the pumpkin beer binge review?
Aww yeah! That was great!
Do it for the member ber… err… content, Shibs!
I always like to try the awarded beers from breweries to see if I could ever make a living as a beer snob
It’s easy. Just insult nearly every beer you see other people drinking. You have to make sure that you do it loud and often.
The style guide exists so you can compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges. Like, if I enter into the Robust Porter category a very nice Hefeweizen I brewed, and it’s all-around a better beer than the porters that were entered, I still shouldn’t win the best “Robust Porter” because it’s not a porter. That’s a more pronounced example but the same idea.
Did anybody else go to GABF this weekend? I went to the last session because we were in KC over the week and got back to town late, but it was pretty fun. I initially thought it would be a chore to get hammered 1 ounce taster at a time, but it was easily managed. Tried Sweetwater brew at the suggestion of some of you southerners and it was pretty great.
Go to the Sweetwater brewery if you ever get a chance. It lives up to the standard set by CO breweries. Live music etc.
This confirms everything I believed and could never be happier
Elysian Night Owl is the pumpkin beer to be behind.
I have to ask; everyone knows that Starbucks didn’t invent pumpkin spice flavor, right?
Wait, what?
St. Arnold’s Pumpkinator is amazing and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise
Bro take it over to TFM no one has the energy here