Name: Topaz
Brand: Fort George Brewery
Availability: InStock

The name is not a gemstone. Topaz is a farm about 20 minutes outside Portland, three generations into being family owned and run. It grew the pumpkins in this beer.

Topaz is a Spiced Pumpkin Ale at 6.7% ABV, and Fort George Brewery says it contains more than 300 pounds of locally grown, hand-harvested, house-processed heirloom pumpkins. The brewery's product notes add the detail that matters most: the fruit goes in fresh, broken down by hand, and straight into the mash.

That is a meaningfully different proposition from most beers in the category. The flavor that North American drinkers recognize as "pumpkin" is very largely a spice profile: cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice. A great many pumpkin beers arrive at it without the vegetable being involved at all. Actual pumpkin is a labor problem rather than a flavor shortcut. It has to be cut, cleaned and handled in quantity, it contributes body and a mild earthiness rather than the spice notes people are expecting, and it makes the brew day considerably longer. Fort George's own photograph of the process shows a crew member working through a pallet of pale, ridged heirloom squash with a power saw. That is a reasonable summary of what the ingredient actually costs.

The spices are still there - the brewery mentions its "myriad spices" - but they are described as an addition to the pumpkins rather than a substitute for them. Fort George describes the finished beer as cozy, mildly roasty, exquisitely malty and amber-colored.

The brewery is also candid that seasonal marketing is not usually its thing. It opens the announcement by declining to make the obvious joke about pumpkin spice lattes and scented candles, notes its general incredulity toward hyper-commercialized seasonal goods, and then makes an unguarded case for pumpkins themselves: how many varieties there are, how large they get, how widely they grow. The enthusiasm is for the plant rather than the season built around it.

Topaz is available now at the Fort George pub in Astoria and at Topaz Farm itself, where the pumpkins were grown. It stays on for as long as the brewery says pumpkin season lasts.

Editor’s Take

Every August the same argument starts up, and every August it is conducted entirely between people who have never once thought seriously about a pumpkin. The season arrives, the lattes arrive, somebody posts about the lattes, somebody else posts about the people posting about the lattes, and at no point does an actual squash enter the conversation.

Fort George has taken the only sensible exit from that loop, which is to become extremely sincere about the vegetable. Read their case for it and you will find genuine enthusiasm about how many varieties there are, how enormous they can get, and how nearly everywhere humans live, some version of a pumpkin is growing. It is the argument of a person who has met a lot of pumpkins.

And then there is the photograph, which I would like framed. A bearded man in a brewhouse, surrounded by pale heirloom squash on wooden pallets, cutting one open with a power saw. That is not a marketing image. Nobody stages that. Somebody had 300 pounds of vegetable to get through before the mash-in and the only honest tool for the job was a reciprocating saw.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.

Topaz Is a Farm, and 300 Pounds of Its Pumpkins Went In

The name is not a gemstone. Topaz is the farm that grew the pumpkins, and Fort George put more than 300 pounds of them through the brewhouse by hand rather than reaching for a bottle of flavoring.

Source & Editorial