Iron Hill Brewery Welcomes the Great Pumpkin

Few things signal the onset of fall like pumpkin-flavored everything, but one annual celebration particularly captures the visceral crispness of the season: the ceremonial tapping of the pumpkin at Iron Hill Brewery in Maple Shade.

Diehard pumpkin beer fans showed up Saturday for the noon release of five seasonal brews: Iron Hill Pumpkin Ale; Cinderella's Carriage, a Belgian Pumpkin Ale; The Great Imperial Pumpkin Ale; Bourbon Imperial Pumpkin Ale; and Manayunk Brewing Company's Yunkin' Punkin' Pumpkin Ale.

Pumpkin additions to the ample menu at Iron Hill included: roasted pumpkin soup, Cinderella pumpkin bruschetta, pumpkin sweet potato croquettes and homemade pumpkin ravioli with sage and brown butter sauce. A delicious pumpkin pie ice cream with cinnamon graham cracker crust and pumpkin-spiced caramel topping capped the meal.

There was a jack-o'-lantern carving contest as well, which was as appropriate an accompaniment to a spectacularly pumpkin-filled experience as the sounds of the Cartoon Christmas Trio.

A special $12 flight of the five pumpkin beers was available all day, but pumpkin growlers were less so. The house supply of the very yummy Bourbon Imperial Pumpkin Ale growlers was exhausted within its first minute of sale.

This surely frustrated some beer lovers, but also underscored a vital point about pumpkin. We covet it as we do fall itself, for both are so fleetingly in season.