Pumpkin ale is an American seasonal fixture. Cellar West builds its version out of English parts.

Halloween Tree returns Friday, September 4, at the brewery's Lafayette taproom and its Erie pub. The brewery describes it as inspired by the rich, malty pub ales of England with a fall-time twist. The build is British malts, real organic pumpkin, and a house blend of hand-crushed autumn spices. English yeast handles the fermentation, and Cellar West credits it for a full body and a lightly sweet finish that accentuates the malt depth.

This year the beer is stronger. The brewery raised both the body and the ABV to 7 percent, and the newsletter gives the reasoning in the first person: the extra weight better stands up to the caramel maltiness and the bold spice and pumpkin undertones.

That is a real problem in the style rather than a spec-sheet change. Baking spice and pumpkin are assertive, and they do not scale down politely. A base beer that cannot answer them ends up tasting mostly of the spice rack. More malt and a bit more alcohol give the rest of the beer something to push back with, and the English yeast helps by leaving sweetness and body behind rather than drying the beer out underneath the spices.

The name comes from Ray Bradbury. The Halloween Tree, published in 1972, follows a group of boys led back through the history of the holiday in search of a missing friend. The label carries the idea over: a bare tree in an oval frame, a jack-o-lantern in a witch's hat at its foot, a bat overhead.

Halloween Tree pours Friday at both locations, on draught and in cans. Lafayette gets one more format. A portion of the batch goes on the British beer engine there while supplies last, which is a hand pump of the sort used to serve cask ale in an English pub. It delivers the beer at cellar temperature with soft natural carbonation instead of pushed CO2, and for an ale assembled this deliberately on an English template, it is the format the recipe was already pointing at. That one runs out when it runs out.

Editor’s Take

The beer is named after Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree. The email announcing it is headed 'Something Wicked This Way Comes,' which is a different Ray Bradbury book entirely. Two Bradbury titles in one newsletter, one of them doing the work and one of them just there for the weather. Somebody at that brewery has a shelf, and has read what is on it.

I have a lot of time for this, because the autumn beer announcement is a genre with roughly four moves in it. Leaves. Sweaters. Fire pits. The word crisp. The usual literary ceiling is a pun about gourds, and the industry made its peace with that years ago. Cellar West went instead to the writer who spent a career on small towns in late October, and came away with two titles before the first paragraph was over. Then the beer goes on a hand pump, which is a very English machine for a very American holiday. I would quite like to be in Lafayette on Friday to see how that lands.

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.

Halloween Tree Went to 7 Percent to Stand Up to the Spice

Cellar West builds its pumpkin ale out of English parts rather than the usual American ones. This year's batch is up to 7 percent, and some of it goes on a hand pump in Lafayette.

Source & Editorial