Padonia Ale House in Timonium plans to run a four-hour ‘Pumpkin Palooza’ Sat. Oct. 5 featur- ing 17 varieties of pumpkin-flavored beer & ale.

Parsonsburg brewery schedules Baltimore debut
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
So you thought pumpkins were only for Halloween and jack-o’-lanterns? plus pie on Christmas and Thanksgiving?  Well, think again.

Seventeen different varieties of pumpkin-flavored beer and ale are set to highlight a Saturday afternoon beerfest next week at Padonia Ale House in Timonium, as the Baltimore County sports bar/restaurant formerly known as Padonia Station inaugurates its first-ever “Pumpkin Palooza.”

For a $10 entry fee, patrons will get three 10-oz. pours from among 20 beers and ales to be offered — the 17 pumpkin flavors along with three Oktoberfest varieties.

Among the featured brews will be Tall Tales Midnight Pumpkin Ale, made by a Parsonsburg, Md. brewery that will be making its Baltimore area debut with the fictional-sounding beer.

Parsonsburg is a census-designated community of 340 in Wicomico County, about 23 miles west of Ocean City on the Eastern Shore, slightly more than a stone’s throw from Salisbury. The Tall Tales Brewing Company offers such other varieties as Paul Bunyan American Pale Ale and Calamity Jane Wild Blonde.

Other notable varieties to be featured on October 5th will include Schlafly Pumpkin Ale, Dogfish Head Punkin [sic] Ale, Cape Ann Fisherman’s Pumpkin Stout, Southern Tier Imperial Pumking — yes, there’s a “G” on the end of “Pumking” and only one “P” — and Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale.

Southern Tier Pumking is truly a Halloween beer, “bewitched & brewed with pagan spirit” according to its label, “in the spirit of All Hallows Eve.” But then as an afterthought the brewer humorously adds that although it’s brewed with pagan spirit it “should be enjoyed with responsibility.”

For University of Maryland fans there’s Terrapin Pumpkinfest, although that beer is brewed in Georgia, not Maryland.

“People go crazy” over these specialty beers, said Karen Jednorski, a craft beer specialist at the Timonium sports club.

“They’re seasonal beers that are really Yum,” she said.

Padonia Ale House ‘Pumpkin Palooza’ beer & ale

Among the 20 varieties to be offered are a “cask-condi- tioned” beer — which is unfiltered, unpasturized and naturally carbonated and fermented — plus pumpkin stout, a number of pumpkin ales, and a bourbon-barrel-aged pumpkin beer.

Door prizes and giveaways include “beer for a year,” whereby, Jednorski said, “the lucky winner gets a case of beer every month for the next twelve months.”

Another prize is the opportunity “to make your own Firkin,” she said, describing it as “a PIN, a cask-conditioned beer.

“The winner gets to go to the brewery and create his or her own beer,” she explained.

There will also be raffles and an opportunity for patrons to meet the brewers.

Padonia Ale House’s goal is 200 participants during the four-hour event — which is scheduled to run from 1-5 p.m. Oct. 5 — and if successful, the sports bar/restaurant plans to run similar beerfests four times a year, once for each of the four seasons.

The door prizes and giveaways next Saturday will occur every half hour during the afternoon.

Acoustic music will be played throughout.
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org