Gourdgeous Pumpkin Ale is Back!

One of my favorite experiences of owning a brewery is when the following occurs:
1 – Customer comes in and says something like ‘No, I don’t want to try that, I don’t like (fill in the blank)  type of beer’. (Everyone’s palettes are different, so after two years, I’ve heard pretty much everything- I don’t like stout, I don’t like hops, I don’t like pilseners, I don’t like dark beers, I hate fruit beers.. and, throughout the Fall we hear a lot of ‘I don’t like pumpkin beer.’ )
2 – I consider a statement like that a challenge, so with a big smile and usually just a tiny bit of convincing of my part, I get them to try a little sip.  (Note- we are lucky enough to have regulars who usually don’t need any convincing to try a beer style that they don’t typically drink. 🙂 )
3a – At which point, most customers say something like ‘Wow, I like that!’
3b- High-fives are exchanged.
Why am I bringing this up?  Well, our pumpkin beer is finally here!  We kind of quietly put it on tap last night, and we heard a lot of ‘I don’t usually like pumpkin beer, but I really like that!’.  If you want to know a secret… we really, really like it too.. and, we usually aren’t fans of pumpkin beers!
Since we first introduced Gourdgeous Pumpkin Ale last year, we have been anxiously waiting for the pumpkins to be ready so we can make it again.  We love this beer soo much because it is so perfectly seasonal, so drinkable, so subtlety spiced & balanced (with hints of ginger, nutmeg, and allspice), so ‘what we want to drink while watching the world World Series’, and, last but not least, so beautiful — the amber / orange-ish color comes solely from the 100 lbs of Dickson Pumpkins used in the mash.
This year’s batch of Gourdgeous was made in a slightly different way than last years, and we like the way the beer came out this way even more.  First, we bought a bunch of pumpkins from Blueberry Bay Farm in Stratham, NH (enough for two batches!!):

And then we cut them down:

And then we cut them down a bit more, and put them in the kettle for a hot bath:

Once they were warmed sufficiently, the team extracted the water to add to the mash, and also mashed the pumpkin to add to the mash. I think this is what they mean when they say ‘we did the mash. We did the monster mash.’

The result is pretty gourdgeous…:

Still think you hate pumpkin beer?  Better stop by today or tomorrow before the rest of our pumpkin-beer hating customers drink it all!