Elysian Brewing’s Great Pumpkin Beer Festival

Elysian Great PumpkinThis weekend Seattle’s Elysian Brewing‘s Great Pumpkin Beer Festival returns for its 9th annual showing, bringing a huge selection of pumpkin beers—they will be pouring something like 64 pumpkin beers at one time!—across three six-hour sessions over three days, starting tomorrow.

From the press release:

Who would have known a funny little obsession with pumpkin beers would grow into one of the Northwest’s Largest Fall Beer Events?! Elysian Brewing’s Great Pumpkin Beer Festival started in Seattle back in 2005 with less than 10 beers in total. Nine years later, pumpkin fever is in full force, and the Elysian’s 9th Annual GPBF (as it’s now known) will span three days, with one – six hour session each day.

Over 60 pumpkin beers will be flowing at any given time, with surprise beer treats, three local food trucks + ice cream and fresh donuts on hand, along with professional pumpkin carving and of course – GIANT PUMPKINS FILLED WITH BEER!

The highlight of the festival is always the tapping of The Great Pumpkin – a giant gourd filled with a pumpkin beer of Elysian’s choice. Once tapped, samples flow freely from the great pumpkin until it runs dry. This, of course, takes about 15 minutes.

The full beer lineup will include over 60 brews on tap with additional beer treats announced and tapped during the event sessions. Elysian’s pumpkin crazy team will be brewing at least a dozen beers for the fest, and will fill the remaining taps with endless varieties of guest pumpkin beers from near and afar. You will have the opportunity to sample everything from sours, to ipas, porters, rauchbiers and other rarities – all paying homage to the mighty gourd.

If you’re hoping to attend but didn’t get tickets yet, know that the Friday and Saturday sessions are all sold out, and there are tickets to the Sunday session only available directly at the Elysian pubs in the Seattle area.

That’s also one of the things I like about this festival as opposed to other general festivals that tend to get crazy as more and more people show up: limited space and limited hours for each session (4 to 10pm on Friday, noon to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday). I know this doesn’t work for every fest out there but it seems to work for this one.

Of the 64 beers pouring, Elysian themselves will have at least 15, and possibly more (they mention vintage and collaboration beers). And, yes, each day they will have a giant pumpkin filled with a pumpkin beer, effectively turning the pumpkin into a cask, that will be tapped to flow freely. So basically, Elysian is the king of pumpkin beer brewing!

It should be a great weekend. Who’s going?

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