Nice! I would rather have the pumpkin!
John
Alright, all you pumpkin beer haters.
According to history, we owe a great debt of gratitude for our American tradition of beer drinking.
It seems as though there was an untold reason for the Pilgrims setting ashore on Plymouth Rock instead of the Jamestown Colony much further down the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.
They had run out of beer!
Just like the latter day Carnival Cruises, the liquor supply needed replenishment. Being that Autumn was close at hand, the friendly native population introduced the Pilgrims to a plentiful harvest of starchy, glucose rich orange vegetation suitable for fermentation. Forget about maize. It wasn’t ripe yet, and would have to wait for the Germans to arrive in the Upper Midwest a couple hundred years hence to discover a way to stretch the grain bill with local adjuncts.
By the time their brew day and primary/secondary fermentation was complete, the Pilgrim’s “ship had sailed” both literally as well as figuratively, so they decided to throw a party and invite the locals. Since Oktoberfest hadn’t been invented yet (and ‘Novemberfest’ seemed awkward and pretentious), they threw a few birds on the barbie and called it Thanksgiving.
Thus was born the autumnal tradition of tailgating and (pumpkin) beer drinking, although it wasn’t until a few centuries later that automobiles came along, with tail lights, which required the invention of cars with tails.
Aren’t you thankful that Cliff Claven didn’t have to explain it to you?
Cheers!