![]() The lid alone, says Dan-o Beyer, the cellarmaster at Elysian, can be 80 pounds in weight. After that, the Elysian team uses a Sawzall, a drill, and a cutting torch to blast through the wall of the pumpkin, which can be up to 16 inches thick. For one thing, a forklift is needed just to move the beast. But that same process with a pumpkin that weighs nearly a ton is a bit harder. Making your own pumpkin keg out of a typical pumpkin is not particularly hard you simply cut off the top, scrape out the guts and seeds, cut a small hole a few inches from the base to insert a tap, then fill with beer. per plant,” says Holland.”The time, effort, and expense lavished on these giants would not be cost effective for most other crops.” Making an Atlantic Giant Keg It is grown almost exclusively for competitions, and it’s not cheap to do that. Holland describes the flavor as “insipid,” noting that the Atlantic Giant is an especially bland variety. The other thing about this particular crop is that it’s not good for eating. Fungal treatments to encourage more nutrient intake, covering them with a protective blanket at night-giant pumpkin farmers will try anything. The Atlantic Giant dates back to one prize-winning squash in the early 1980s, but growers have figured out all kinds of ways to encourage this crazy squash to grow ever faster, bigger, and heavier. One obvious problem with this logic is to examine a zucchini, which has a hard 5 sided stem, but is universally called a squash,” wrote Holland in an email.įestival goers enjoying beer from the pumpkin keg ![]() Under this definition, the Atlantic giant would be a squash. “Squash are said to have a softer, round stem. To call a squash a pumpkin, it has to be a hard fall or winter squash with a generally round shape and an orange, cream, or white color. All the same species! The Atlantic Giant pumpkin, which is what the keg was made from, Holland told me, is also a member of this tribe. That one species includes such seemingly unrelated varieties as zucchini, sugar baby pumpkins, and pattypan squash. It turns out that “pumpkin” is not a strict categorization-it’s more like a loose description of a squash, and most squash are just variants of one species, Cucurbita pepo, that’s been selectively bred to have thousands of different shapes and colors. We got the chance to talk with Holland, and the first question was obvious: what exactly are these insane, jumbo-sized things? Pumpkin or Squash? ![]() The chosen pumpkin was a 1,790-pound monster provided by Joel Holland, a local farmer who grew it specifically for the festival. ![]() (This year, their selection included Hi-P, a hibiscus-pumpkin blend Night Owl ale One-Eye Jackie pumpkin wheatwine and Crust Punk pumpkin kvass.) Each year, Seattle-based Elysian Brewing Company takes an insanely huge pumpkin and turns it into a keg for one of their dozen-plus pumpkin beers. The festival has all your normal fall activities-carving stations, food trucks, costume competitions, and such. (That's the family name for squash and gourds.)Ī whopping 50 breweries, mostly from the western United States, treked to the Seattle Center, just north of Pike Place Market, to participate in the festival, which spanned the last two weekends of September. This year marks the 13th annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival, a Seattle tradition to celebrate autumn's favorite cucurbit. ![]()
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