Pumpkin-flavored items coming to store shelves whether it’s fall or not

We’re still several weeks away from the official start of fall, and yet we’re already being inundated with pumpkin-flavored everything.

One of the most beloved treats is Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte. This drink is so popular it was recently an answer on Jeopardy. Jimmy Fallon included it in his Thank You Notes. And, this year, Starbucks is kicking it up a notch.

Starbucks launched a lone Pumpkin Spice Latte twitter page on August 4 and it has already gathered 64,000 followers.

With the page, they announced the PSL, as it is now called since saying the full name takes too much time, will be available a month early.

But wait, that’s not all. Breweries have also already begun releasing their pumpkin beers. Pumpkin beers are already on stores shelves, yet summer isn’t even gone yet.

“I understand the objections, but that’s kind of the way it has to work I’m afraid,” says Dick Cantwell with Seattle’s Elysian Brewery.

Cantwell says this is the earliest that they’ve put their Night Owl Pumpkin Ale on store shelves.

“We first made Night Owl in about 1998. Back in those days, we only made four-barrel batches of it. It sold out immediately and it took us only a couple of years to realize we needed to make a whole lot more of it. This year, we’re making about 5,000 barrels.”

He says pumpkin beers date back to colonial times when brewers were looking for new ways to make beer without depending on malt imports from England.

Craft brewers rediscovered the idea more recently.

“The first one I can think of making a pumpkin beer was Buffalo Bill’s Brewpub in Hayward, California did a pumpkin beer a long time ago, back in the 80s,” says Cantwell. “But it’s always been more of an east coast thing than a west coast thing, and we sort of ran with it and I think we’ve really brought the thing out to the west coast and have gotten a lot of people interested in it.”

Pumpkin beers being an east coast “thing” is one of a few reasons we’re seeing them on shelves earlier and earlier.

Elysian beers are sold on the east coast, and they need the product earlier in order to ship it out there on time. Plus, Cantwell says, stores demand an earlier product.

“When you go talk to Safeway or QFC or any of the other chains, you need to make your pitch months in advance and you need to have samples so they can taste them and try them and make a decision, that’s one of the main reasons seasonal beers keep coming out earlier and earlier and earlier.”

While he knows there’s push-back, the fact of the matter is the pumpkin beers sell and they sell out, much to the chagrin of many who are upset when they try to buy the beer in October and it’s already sold out. To that, Cantwell says:

“I’m afraid we can’t really help the fact that it sells out early. I mean I suppose we could keep making it, but once again we have to get ready for our winter seasonal.”

That would be the Bifrost Winter Ale.