At Fort George, we use what we’ve got around us to make good beer. Because we’re on the very top edge of Oregon State – we have hundreds of hop farms and grain growers just miles away in every direction. And we’ve also got Pumpkins.
Pumpkins are one of the oldest cultivated crops in the world and have been grown and eaten on this continent for over 9,000 years (at least). They grow everywhere (from Spain to China to Texas to your backyard), quickly (in about 100 days), in all conditions (as long as they have a fair amount of water and a little sun). You can store them for a year or more, they’re fabulously nutritious and versatile, and one pumpkin can seed a whole field of future crops. Also, you can put them in beer and they make the beer taste great.
Pumpkin is high in fermentable sugar so our Pumpkin Beer recipes require less malt and produce a subtly sweet, balanced beer. Tasty autumnal flavor, with or without added spices.
Our friends at Topaz Farm grow over a dozen types of pumpkin and other winter squash – from Cucurbita Pepo “Black Knight” to big cinderella pumpkins (Cucurbita Maxima) to the supremely sweet and roasty Jarrahdale pumpkins we used to make Jump Scare and Topaz Pumpkin. Topaz is a small, family-owned and operated farm on Sauvie Island, just outside of Portland. They grow their berries, flowers and produce responsibly and sustainably, with water conserving farming methods and without pesticides or chemicals.
This year we put over 2,000 pounds of heirloom variety Topaz Farm pumpkins into our beer.
You can taste all those hand-picked, hand-processed, Jarrahdale Pumpkins, grown less than two hours from our brewery, in a shimmery, light amber glass of Topaz Pumpkin, or in a can of Jump Scare – an Imperial Spiced Pumpkin Stout with over 150 pounds of roasted pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and clove.
Topaz Pumpkin is in cans and on draft at the Pub and at Topaz Farm this month during their Fall Harvest weekends. You can buy tickets for farm activities at Topaz, or stop by during the week without a ticket from now until the end of October.
We’ve been making beer (and sometimes serving beer) out of pumpkins for decades.
Drunkin Pumpkin was brewed with fresh harvested, hand-roasted (never puréed) local, organic pumpkins from around 2009-2017.
For a few years, we bottled and released this un-spiced, real deal, fire-roasted pumpkin beer as Squash Buckler.
It’s the season of Pumpkin Beer. See you at the Fort.
