Susquehanna Brewing Company, which recently repurchased the Stegmaier brewing name, together offer two unique variations of pumpkin spice beer. SBC’s pumpkin ale (as seen here) is ‘lighter, crisper, and more spice forward’ than its Stegmaier Brewery counterpart, which is brewed with natural vanilla and boasts a richer taste.
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
Benny’s Brewing Company offers a pumpkin ale by pint, four packs and 16 and 32 oz cans. The brewery also distributes to over 100 locations throughout the area.
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
Back Mountain Brewing Company’s Jeff Marsland, Charity Cadwalader and Clay Cadwalader pose with glasses of the brewery’s pumpkin beer, which Marsland says is like ‘fall in a glass.’
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
Fall is here, with it, so too is the arrival of pumpkin spice and everything nice.
Love it or hate it, pumpkin spice beer is creeping its way onto taps in virtually every brewery in the area.
The brew, which is best described as “the fall season in a glass,” finds its origins in the 1600s when American colonists substituted pumpkins for malt when crafting beer. The tradition has held on for over four centuries and many now consider the ale to be a right of passage for the season.
But what makes the drink so popular anyway?
SBC and Stegmaier offer up two choices of pumpkin beer
“I don’t know why people love it, but they sure do” said Fred Maier, co-founder and vice president of Susquehanna Brewing Co. (SBC) in Pittston.
“It’s just cozy, I guess. People are putting the shorts away and taking out the sweaters. I don’t know when it started, but it is an undeniable force in the market and people love it,” he added.
SBC, which recently repurchased Maier’s family’s heritage brewery, Stegmaier, offers two variations of the fall brew — one from each brewery.
SBC’s pumpkin ale is blended with pumpkin pie spices, and Maier describes it as being lighter, crisper and more spice forward than its Stegmaier counterpart, which is brewed with natural vanilla and boasts a richer taste.
“Most of what we taste is really the spice blend — that’s what really comes through in the beer,” Maier said.
“The pumpkin does change the body of the beer — it adds more body to the liquid, but the spices are really what creates the aroma and comes through your nose when you drink it. You’re not necessarily tasting the pumpkin — you’re feeling the pumpkin in the beer, but you’re really smelling and tasting the spice blend.”
According to Maier, the entire brewing process takes a minimum of two weeks consisting of milling malt, steeping malted barley, converting sugars, separating sugar water from plant matter, and finally boiling, fermenting and aging the brew.
The breweries sell the beverage from mid-August through early November, and Maier says the distinct taste is a stark departure from the flavors that define the summer brews.
“You’re going from citrus, light, bright beer in the summer and then all of a sudden, with the flip of a switch, you get something a little amber colored, richer, spiced up, and it’s just a completely different drink,” he said.
Nevertheless, people flock to the brewery come August to get their hands on a taste of fall.
“People who want them know they love them and they wait for them. There’s been seasons where people have said ‘Oh, no! Pumpkin’s waning’, and then it comes storming back the next year,” said Maier.
SBC and Stegmaier sell the fall beverages in-house and anywhere that you can purchase beer locally.
“We have the best background to showcase pumpkin beers”
Benny Brewing Co. in Hanover Twp. has been carrying pumpkin ale since the brewery first opened in 2016, and owner Ben Schonfeld says it’s their most popular seasonal offering.
“We put that beer on draft last week and I already see the influx of people ordering pumpkin beer right now, so it’s definitely very popular,” said Schonfeld.
According to him, the brewing process isn’t all that different from any other batch of beer the brewery makes, spare one key distinction: roasted pumpkin meat is added near the end of production.
The result is a creation that Schonfeld says tastes like a pumpkin pie with a dollop of cool whip on top.
It’s a drink that has grown in popularity at Benny’s, something that Schonfeld speculates has a lot to do with the surrounding area.
“So many people love the festive appeal to that style of beer as the leaves start falling from the trees,” he said.
“I think it’s just the festiveness of what our area brings as far as foliage and all of the festivals and different things that go on in our area throughout the fall time of the year. I just feel like we have the best background to showcase pumpkin beers in our area.”
Benny’s carries the pumpkin ale in-house by pint, four packs and 16 and 32 oz cans. The brewery also distributes to over 100 locations throughout the area.
Pumpkin ale will be available for purchase on tap and in cans beginning the second week of September until the week of Thanksgiving.
Finding a flavor customers enjoy
For self-proclaimed “beer geeks” Clay Cadwalader and Jeff Marsland, creating the perfect beer is all about making something that customers like to drink.
“They’re the lifeblood of the business, so, really, we’re making the beer for them,” said Marsland, who operates as a brewer for Back Mountain Brewing Company in Dallas.
The brewery has offered a different pumpkin beer every year since its opening in 2021 — by popular demand.
“I wasn’t going to do a pumpkin beer the first year just because we just opened in August, but by September we had customers coming in asking if we were doing one,” said Cadwalader, who co-owns Back Mountain Brewing Company with his wife, Charity Cadwalader.
According to Marsland, the beer offers just another way to dive into the fall season.
“You get all of the leaves falling, then the pumpkin beer kind of smooths right into that. You smell it and you’re immediately hit with all of those spices and it just works,” he said.
This year, the brew is a pumpkin spice porter with a coffee base. According to him, this year’s porter is more of a pumpkin spice flavor compared to last year’s stout that was more akin to pumpkin pie.
And the ever-evolving aspect of brewing is the nature of the beast, Marsland said.
“Making beer is all about experimenting and trying new things — whatever pleases your palette. We tried this year’s pumpkin beer and it was a home run for both of us, so we were like ‘let’s do that’,” he said.
What makes Back Mountain Brewing Company’s pumpkin beer unique is that it’s tailored specifically to the taste of regular customers, whose feedback Marsland says heavily influences the recipe.
“I think our pumpkin beer is special because we developed a recipe according to what our customers enjoy, so every year it’s a little different,” he said.
Back Mountain Brewing Company sells their pumpkin beer, which is set to release on October 1, exclusively in-house.
