Ron Jeffries was that rarest of contemporary craft brewers, a genuine inspired innovator and mentor to a great many who followed in his footsteps. Jeffries, who died this week, founded the Michigan-based Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in 2004.
Using traditional Belgian brewing methods of open fermentation, oak-aging, & bottle conditioning allow the influence of wild yeast & bacteria to work their way into our beers.
Interestingly, when Jeffries and his wife first named their company, it occurred to neither of them that beer fans would assume they were using pumpkins to make beer. Ten years passed before Jolly Pumpkin La Parcela emerged, deploying real pumpkin, cacao and the brewery’s characteristic oak aging.
At the first fall beer festival, people started asking for pumpkin beer, and we were like, ‘Well, we don’t have any pumpkin beer.’ Then it became a bit of a joke with people who knew the brewery and people who didn’t because at subsequent festivals, people in line would ask for the pumpkin beer and people behind them would be, like, ‘They don’t make a pumpkin beer!’”
Of course sour/wild beers eventually became all the rage, and to an extent they still are, as too often infused, confused and submerged with flavorings in ways that can be mighty infuriating to we purists, but Jeffries approached them in staunchly traditionalist fashion and conjured an amazing product line. For that alone, he deserves every last plaudit.
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I never met Jeffries but read about him and watched a few videos, and not once can I recall hearing him suggest that his ales should be consumed “ice cold.”
Forty-two years into this journey of beer and brewing betterment, and I’m still fascinated by the American obsession with “ice cold” beer. Whenever I see these two words attached to local brewery offerings, I do pirouettes in my grave — and I’m not even dead (yet).
If beer actually tastes good, does it really need to be served “ice cold”?
And, if beer actually tastes good, doesn’t serving it “ice cold” numb the taste buds and render the potential sensory enjoyment absolutely meaningless?
I suppose “ice cold beer” is a reflex action traced to traumatic ancestral memories of Blatz or Wiedemann, similar to saying “Gesundheit” when someone sneezes, although it’s likely that few readers under the age of 50 know what this means.
