By this point, craft beer has become so widespread that all that’s left is the backlash once the reality sets in that at $7 a pint, it costs a lot more to go out and have a couple of beers with your friends than it used to. Combine that with the recent craze for all things pumpkin and/or spice, and that means you’ve got a whole bunch of grown-up Linus Van Pelts impatiently twirling their handlebar mustaches and waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive so they can slaughter him and turn him into beer.
That’s proving more difficult than usual this year, though, because as Draft Magazine reports, last year’s poor pumpkin harvest has left craft breweries scrambling to acquire enough pumpkin puree to make their seasonal pumpkin beers. The big guys, as usual, have already been taken care of—Blue Moon has been advertising its Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale since the end of last month—so it’s smaller craft breweries who are struggling to get their orders filled.
And farms on the East Coast of the U.S. are anticipating an even worse harvest this year, so if you see fewer than usual pumpkin beers on the shelf at your local beer-snob emporium this fall, you might want to stock up. After all, there are only a couple hundred other kinds of beer to choose from. Or you could smugly remark that October is actually wet hops season, thankyouverymuch. Your call.