Pumpkin spice season in craft usually means a beer. Hamburg Brewing Company has put this year's version in a cider instead.
Pumpkin Spice Hard Cider is new to the Hamburg lineup, a semi-sweet cider at 6 percent. The brewery describes warm spices over bright, fruit-forward flavor, and it is unusually specific about the fruit underneath: local New York State apples, pressed rather than reconstituted. "Never from concentrate" is the line in the newsletter.
That claim carries more weight in a spiced cider than it would elsewhere. Spice covers a lot of ground. When cinnamon and nutmeg are doing the talking, the base juice is the easiest part of the recipe to economize on, and most drinkers would never catch it. Naming the fruit source is the brewery declining to take that route.
New York is one of the largest apple-growing states in the country, and Hamburg sits inside that, south of Buffalo in Erie County. Sourcing locally here is less a statement of principle than a description of what is nearby.
The brewery also flags the cider as naturally gluten free. Cider is gluten free by default, apples being what they are, but it is a useful thing to have printed on the can for anyone who has to ask.
Pumpkin Spice Hard Cider pours on tap and goes into 6-packs to go at the brewery on Thursday, September 3, alongside the returning Oktoberfest. Hamburg says it will also turn up at craft beer retailers in the region.
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.