Fall is a wonderful season: leaves changing color, Seahawks games, sweaters, all that good stuff. Yet it’s also a time I dread for one very specific reason: the impending pumpkin-spice apocalypse. The list of pumpkin-spiced things has grown from run-of-the-mill lattes to include Oreos, gum, and even English muffins, but the worst culprit—the bane of my existence this time of year—is pumpkin beer.

I’m sure plenty of you are tempted to close your browser window in disgust. So be it. I’m confident that history will be on my side, once we sort through the wreckage of the great Pumpkin Spice War of 2032. What exactly is wrong with pumpkin beers? I thought you’d never ask.

First of all, the onslaught has crowded a few classic seasonal styles out of the market. Fall used to be one of the great beer seasons because of the convergence of styles. Living so close to the world’s largest hops-growing region, we’re able to get fresh-hopped ales that taste like the dying days of summer, like those from Stoup Brewing or Two Beers. You can enjoy a spicy, coppery, slightly sweet Oktoberfest from Silver City or Chuckanut. Or you can fully embrace the changing of the seasons with a dark, nutty, complex brown ale from Reuben’s Brews or Diamond Knot.

Compare that range of flavors to pumpkin beers, which all seem to fall into the same trap: They’re highly alcoholic and so loaded with sugar that you can’t possibly drink more than one, even if you do happen to be one of the unfortunates who like the flavor. While I fully understand that some people love rich, high-alcohol beers, do you really want your beer to double as dessert? Everything pumpkin-spiced is laden with sugar, and of course beer is no different.

The real crux of the issue is that pumpkins have no distinct flavor. Have you ever tried to eat one that wasn’t baked, sugared, and laden with “pumpkin pie spice”? I hope you like blandness mixed with an unappealing texture, because that’s what you’re getting. What you think you like (pumpkin) is actually a set of spices that you just associate with pumpkin pie: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and vanilla. Hell, most of the time another squash (usually butternut) is used in place of pumpkin, so quite literally you’re not tasting it.

Pumpkin spice used to be reserved for pie, that great staple of autumnal joy. Encountering those flavors just once or twice a year made them celebrational, a tradition as intimately connected to Thanksgiving as cranberry sauce or pretending to get along with your in-laws. Cheapening that distinct association of a set of flavors with a particular time and holiday is the real reason I hate pumpkin beer. Why not enjoy many of the other great fall beers, from Oktoberfest-style lagers to fresh-hopped beers to nut-brown ales? They’re just as seasonal, they’re not so laden with alcohol and sugar, and most of all they actually taste like beer—not a generic squash and some dessert spices.

thebarcode@seattleweekly.com