Last weekend in Seattle (October 4 and 5), the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival returned for its 20th edition. This long-running event from Elysian Brewing started out as a relatively small brewfest in 2005 with a mere 12 pumpkin beers, and grew over the years to be a multi-day festival featuring dozens — over 80 at one point!

We last attended the GPBF way back in 2014, for its tenth anniversary, so when the opportunity came to attend the 20th this year, we decided to go.

Let’s get the disclosure out of the way: We were able to attend for free on a media pass offered by M&C Saatchi, Elysian’s creative and communications agency. (This is the same agency that arranged the virtual Elysian tastings via Zoom the last several years that I’ve blogged about.) Accepting the media invite provided the opportunity to go.

Also, a shout-out to the Maxwell Hotel in Seattle, where we stayed. No affiliation, we didn’t get any deals and paid our own way, it’s just a nice boutique hotel that’s about a 5-7 minute walk from the Seattle Center venue. Great staff, good amenities, unique and eclectic décor; we’ll stay there again.

Before I talk about this year’s GPBF, first a bit of background.

History

I mentioned above that the GPBF started in 2005. I’m actually not entirely clear on whether that it accurate; I pulled that number from this poster image showing all 20 of the event posters going back to 2005:

You can see in that image that the “first” event in 2005 had 12 beers listed. However, back in 2021 Elysian hosted a virtual Pumpkin Pack tasting and talked about the company’s history of brewing pumpkin beer and the owners shared this tidbit about the first pumpkin fest:

The Great Pumpkin Beer Fest got its start in 2004 when then-brewmaster Dick Cantwell “messed up” a pumpkin brew (they did not specify how it got messed up), leaving Elysian with three pumpkin beers on tap: Night Owl, The Great Pumpkin, and this #3. What to do? The only logical thing, of course—throw a pumpkin beer festival!

Other online sources (here and here, for example) recounting the tale mention brewing four beers and inviting four other breweries to contribute for a total of eight beers. So, a bit of discrepancy, and if I had to square the circle here, I’d suggest maybe that first impromptu event took place in 2004 with three or four Elysian beers plus guests, and in 2005 the company brought it back and made it “official.” Maybe?

Or maybe just the year was wrong in the anecdote shared during the virtual tasting and it was really 2005. This seems to be bolstered by the fact that the 2006 poster (in the above picture) explicitly says “2nd annual” fest. But it’s always good to have a little bit of mystery in the history.

Regardless, each year the festival grew and the number of pumpkin beers exploded; the 2007 poster boasts 13 pumpkin beers, while by 2010 there were “40+ pumpkin beers.” This jumped to 50 in 2011 and to more than 80 by 2012.

And bear in mind, these were all pumpkin beers, all brewed with real pumpkin. The use of actual pumpkin in the beer was insisted upon by Cantwell, and while there were a fair number of “traditional” pumpkin pie spiced types of pumpkin beers served, there were also many creative ones, combining pumpkin with a variety of other ingredients and styles.

Contrast that to the GPBF over the last several years (this year included), in which the taplist has expanded to include fresh hop beers, Oktoberfest beers, and other fall and harvest seasonal specialties in addition to pumpkin. And this is fine, but I fondly remember attending the festival in 2013 and 2014 and being in awe of the sheer number of pumpkin beers and the commitment to nothing but.

GPBF at 20

Up until 2017, the festival was mainly located at one (or several) of Elysian’s brewery locations; when we attended in 2013 and 2014, it was at the Airport Way brewery. Starting in 2017, the event moved to Seattle Center—a larger, central venue iconic to the brewery’s hometown, in the shadow of the Space Needle.

I remember it being quite festive back in 2014, with costumes (and costume contest), music, the tapping of the giant pumpkin, and so on. But what struck me about this year’s event was the overall carnival atmosphere, in part I believe because of the large venue, far beyond our past experience. There was a DJ with a lightshow, stilt walkers and other performers, carnival fairway-style arcade games (ring toss, balloon blast, and so on), a fortune teller, freak show display, and more.

That’s a mundane sentence, actually, and doesn’t really convey the energy of the GPBF, particularly in the evenings. Overall it’s equal parts beer fest and carnival with a dash of pumpkin-themed Renaissance fair thrown in. It was lively, loud, and crowded at times, but despite all that, it was never rowdy or unruly (we all know beer festivals can certainly go that way). We talked with one of the event staff on Saturday who confirmed that there were no issues the previous night.

Seattle Center is a good venue to host this event, with the space occupying the Fisher Pavilion and the field adjacent to the immediate north; this allowed drink stations be spread out along with the food trucks, ample space for a large tent in the middle of the field, a large area in front of the Pavilion for the DJ and the giant pumpkin to be tapped, and more. There was a lot of walking involved but it’s a big space and I think it was a good layout overall.

There were 20 beer pouring stations with four beers each, for 80 beers on tap overall. I would have loved to have seen all pumpkin beers covering every tap, but as it was, there was a good mix overall, and I counted 30 unique pumpkin beers, ciders, and mead; the rest were fresh hop beers and other fall seasonal styles. I mostly stuck to pumpkin, and of those, ones that I haven’t had before, though I did fit a couple of non-pumpkin beers in.

One of the highlights of the fest, of course, is the tapping of the giant pumpkin, which Elysian fills with beer. This is the craziest part of the night when it comes to the crowd, as hundreds of people are gathered around the tapping for the spectacle and a chance to get a pour of the beer from the gourd. As a general rule, if you want a front row (or nearly so) view to the action, you’ll need to start lining up about a half hour before the tapping.

I was able to get some of the pumpkin’d beer each night; Friday it was Punkuccino in the giant pumpkin, while Saturday was (I think) Night Owl.

Once the pumpkin is tapped out, it’s smashed open. You can see from Friday’s night’s shell (find it in the gallery below) that in addition to the beer, it had coffee beans and cinnamon sticks inside of it.

All in all, it’s quite a party, and aside from the pumpkin tapping, the crowd is never rowdy or problematic (and even then, it’s mostly just congenially chaotic).

Why it matters

Does a beer festival have to matter, in the sense that it should be more than just an event designed to sell beer or draw in tourists? No, of course not; it can be strictly promotional and designed to generate profit, and that’s fine. The Great Pumpkin Beer Festival does have elements of that to be sure, but in the larger scheme of things, I think it’s more than that and that it does matter.

First of all, the GPBF is as much a community event as it is a beer festival; people are there for the carnival atmosphere, the costumes, and the spectacle, as much as they are for the beer. I talked to a number of people who traveled to Seattle just for this fest, from all over the country, and beer wasn’t always their priority.

Is it a Seattle institution? I don’t know, I don’t know the Seattle scene well enough to say, but it feels a bit like that to me.

Next, it’s a charitable event, with 100% of the ticket proceeds going back to the community. This year (and for the past several years) the beneficiary was The Vera Project, an organization that fosters community-driven art and music:

The Vera Project is an all-ages nonprofit space dedicated to fostering personal and community transformation through collaborative, youth-driven engagement in music and art. A music venue, screen print shop, recording studio, art gallery, and safe space for radical self-expression, VERA is a home to Seattle’s creative community.

Members of The Vera Project were on hand to talk about the organization, as well as making hand-screened coasters, offering up posters, accepting donations, and more. It’s an important part of the community and a worthwhile charitable partner for an event like the GPBF.

Finally, I’ve managed to get this far without mentioning the elephant in the room—Elysian’s ownership by Anheuser-Busch InBev. There’s a segment of craft/independent beer (beer geeks, small brewers, beer purists, whatever) for which it’s verboten to support megacorporate-owned breweries, especially where AB InBev is involved, which we’re all perfectly aware of, and for many it’s as much an ethical decision as a financial one.

(And if you’re going to make bones about ethics, it’s arguably more important to be aware of Elysian workers’ unionization efforts and potential strike that was news leading up to the festival.)

But the reality is, the general beer-drinking population neither knows nor cares about who owns Elysian and why that’s supposed to be a bad thing. They’re there attending GPBF for the fun, the novelty, the community of it—and they were not disappointed. And as long as Elysian (no matter who owns it) is able to continue putting on the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival, the community will continue to turn out and support it, and that’s ultimately what matters.

The gallery

Okay you’ve read enough and are dying to see pictures! From here on down enjoy the gallery from this year’s GPBF.