The History of Pumpkin Beer

Now this is fascinating.

What’s particularly interesting is that the decline of pumpkin beer in the early 19th century was not about temperance, but about a modernizing nation turning its back on traditional food as rustic and uncouth. This is interesting given today’s fretting among first world foodies about developing world nations leaving their traditional foods behind for western-style processed food. And even today’s food revival has not really brought pumpkin back into vogue, as one can see in the pumpkin beers that often attempt to clone pumpkin pie rather than pumpkin itself.