Interview with Kevin Ely from Uinta Brewing Company
Kevin Ely is the Brewmaster at Uinta Brewing Company. Since a young age Kevin has been involved with brewing, having experimented first on his own, then paved his way through a variety of brewing courses before finally beginning his career in brewing almost 15 years ago. Let's just say Kevin is an experienced fellow. I was lucky enough to have him take part in a QA session with me to find out what he's about, where he stands on the pumpkin beer craze and where he thinks it's all heading.
BPB: Let us in on a little bit about how you got started in this industry? Did you always love the brewing arena?
Kevin: I was a student of nutritional biochemistry at UC Davis and began homebrewing when I was...well, a young student let’s say. I instantly realized that I could also study brewing science and so I did. I took my first core brewing science courses when I was 20 years old back when it was legal to do so at UC Davis. My professors were Michael J. Lewis and a host of several other Food Science and Technology department professors. I then did my practical brewing internship at Ska Brewing in Durango in 1998. I finished my studies in 1999 and formally began my brewing career at the turn of the century. I guess the rest is history as they say.
BPB: Certainly some experience under the belt! Here we are in the fall season again. Obviously I'd tell you it's the greatest season of them all, but do you enjoy this season? Do you enjoy pumpkin beer?
Kevin: It's a good season for sure. Fall (generally), or at least the changing of the seasons, harvest festivals, Volksfests and Oktoberfests make fall all-in-all a beer season. I do enjoy a well-balanced pumpkin beer. Essentially and especially one that is not too heavy on the spices relative to the beer that supports the intense spice aromas and flavors.
BPB: That's what I like to hear. Pumpkin beers are highly anticipated. There's a ton of variety ranging from spice-heavy to extremely sweet, and even options with very little pumpkin involvement at all. So often times people might buy pumpkin beers they haven't had, blindly hoping it satisfies their taste. The dilemma is that these are seasonal selections, so we're limited on time for experimenting and discovery. What do you guys find helps encourage people to take a chance and taste your pumpkin beer for the first time when there are so many other options for them to choose from?
Kevin: Well we have two pumpkin beers: one beer called Punk’n and a second, big barrel aged beer called Oak Jacked. Opposite ends of the spectrum really. The Punk’n is a sessionalble 5.0% ABV, the spices are not overly intense and the body is not too syrupy or heavy. The Oak Jacked has a bit more spice so as not to be lost, but it is maltier, significantly more alcoholic at 10.31% and much more complex.
BPB: I've had the pleasure of having both and I found them both to be solid options in the past. What qualities of your pumpkin beer do you believe continues to distinguish them from the rest?
Kevin: The Punk’n is probably the most sessionable pumpkin beer out there. The Oak Jacked is a carnival of flavors from vanilla, coconut, dried fruits, pumpkin spices, bourbon, and the list goes on. Essentially one is easy going, and the other is an experience, yet still very quaffable.
BPB: Can you give us a general insight into how you go about creating your recipes?
Kevin: The number one goal with any recipe for any particular style (in this case pumpkin beers) is to brew a superbly drinkable beer. This is the aim for every one of the recipes that we develop here at Uinta. With Punk’n we wanted good spice and pumpkin character, but not over the top. Balance was absolutely key. With the Oak Jacked, balance was again very important, but here the focus was more on a balance between the alcohol/spice/wood and the malty/carmelly/bourbony flavors. Not bad for a spiced 10+% ABV wood aged beer. Ultimately we want to truly enjoy the beer that we brew. It sounds obvious, but it is a concept that is sometimes lost in the effort to be new and unique. You can still brew a unique beer, but you cannot forget why it is that you brew the beer to begin with – to enjoy a pint at the end of the day.
BPB: Absolutely! Like with any art or craft, we can so easily lose sight of the end goal. But it definitely needs to keep pumpkin in sight! Many breweries opt for Cinderella pumpkins because, unlike traditional pumpkins, these have little hollow space, richer flavors and more available sugars. Some rely on canned pumpkin. In some cases recipes don't even use pumpkin but instead rely on spices to create the sensation of consuming pumpkin pie. How important is it to use, or at least consider, fresh pumpkin?
Kevin: I personally believe that the very best character comes from roasted pumpkin meat. We do not roast our pumpkin meat because of the inherent difficulties in doing so on a large scale. I believe that the next best option is fresh pumpkin, but that is just my opinion. And when I say fresh I include frozen in that category. To some this may sound counter intuitive, but frozen pumpkin (as well as all frozen whole foods such as blueberries, peas, sweet potatoes, etc.) has essentially been preserved in the most flavor and nutritionally stable manner. All other methods of preservation include storing the whole pumpkin in a crate are, in my opinion, inferior to frozen whole foods. This being said as you can guess we use frozen pumpkin harvested the fall before we brew. So in essence we have farm fresh pumpkins preserved in the most flavor stable manner through the winter and spring and then we brew it in summer.
BPB: That makes perfect sense. You mentioned you use frozen pumpkin harvested from the fall before. On the topic of time, the release dates of pumpkin beers seem to be a trending topic. Exactly how early is too early? It seems pumpkin beers arrive on shelves just a little earlier every year. What are your thoughts on this "race" for shelf space? Does it honestly exist? After the freeze, when do you actually begin the process of preparing the coming year's pumpkin beer?
Kevin: I agree. I believe that pumpkin beers are consumed too early in the year. I generally do not see it as a race for shelf space, but rather an effort to get the volume of pumpkin beer that the beer drinker wants to the beer drinker before the middle of November. If we harvested fresh local pumpkins, brewed the beer and got it to market our beer would only be purchased by the bulk of beer drinkers from late October to the middle of November. This is a real problem because most people want pumpkin beers to be available for more than 3 weeks, but come Thanksgiving time the beer drinker drops pumpkin beers like a hot rock in favor of Christmas/Winter time seasonals. For example many years we have been running short on pumpkin beers so we brew one extra batch in early October in an attempt to keep up with demand only to find that the last batch packaged in mid-October sits in the stores until May. That is crazy! So instead, we make an effort to get the beer to market by the end of August, so that we can fill the beer drinker’s desire for pumpkin beers and get them out of the market before Thanksgiving. Our schedule is essentially purely driven by market forces and fortunately we have an excellent solution in frozen pumpkin. Also it is a huge challenge for any brewery that produced pumpkin beers to keep up with the other brands while tanking on a huge load of pumpkin beers. This is also another reason why we brew a bit early, so that we can minimize the spike is production. That’s the long answer...
BPB: How has the conversation around "pumpkin beer" progressed over the past several years? I'm sure you've seen a lot.
Kevin: Well, it seems to have progressed well. I would say that the beers are good, the beers may be in the market a bit early but aside from that, everyone and everything involved in the pumpkin beer business and market seems very good.
BPB: What future do you see for pumpkin beer? What do you see being its biggest challenge?
Kevin: The future looks bright! Everyone loves them and so brewers just need to try to satisfy the palates of all beer drinkers as best they can with well-balanced, yet interesting beers. The biggest challenge is keeping up with production of all our other beers during pumpkin beer season.
BPB: What's the biggest misconception surrounding pumpkin beer, or even the fall beer season in general?
Kevin: That fresh pumpkins are harvested, brewed with, fermented, packaged, shipped, stocked on the shelf for the beer drinker before October 31. You need to use preserved pumpkin. If you are drinking pumpkin beers after October 31st then bless you and keep it up, but you are a rare bird. Essentially pumpkins were in use to carry us through winter and could be used during that time as an adjunct in brewing, but our current culture is to get away from pumpkins as soon as Halloween passes. I digress and could continue, but I must get back to my day job.
BPB: That makes me a rare bird! Well, Kevin I want to thank you for taking the time to take part in this QA session. I do have one last question that must be asked: if you could have one last glass of beer, what would you choose, and it doesn't need to be a pumpkin beer?
Kevin: It would bee the freshest beer possible. Definitely at the brewery. For now, that brewery would be Schoenramer and the beer would be a Pils.
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Thanks again to Kevin Ely for his time. I'll be publishing a couple of these throughout the month so stay tuned. Until then, check out Uinta's selection at Uinta Brewing's website.