Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ale is unlike any beer you’re ever likely to have. Stocked at places like your neighborhood craft-beer stop and World Market, Jolly Pumpkin’s selections are a must for avid craft-beer drinkers, thanks to its unique brewing process and exceptional taste. The brewery uses open fermentation, oak barrel aging and bottle conditioning to create a beer that stands above the rest. Focusing on traditional rustic country-style beers, it make brews aimed to lighten the spirit and soothe the soul.
Founded by Ron Jeffries in Dexter, Michigan, Jolly Pumpkin is represented by a restaurant, brewery and distillery in Traverse City, along with a café and brewery in Ann Arbor. The brewery’s creative processes produce a striking flavor in its beers, usually called a farmhouse ale or American wild ale. Still, it’s been a long, twisted path to where it is today.
“The planning changed over the years, as you can imagine, as the craft-beer scene has really progressed a lot. Back when I started, a pale ale used to be far out there and a stout was just crazy,” said Jeffries. “As people became more accustomed to craft beer and more breweries were opening up, we tried to think what our brewery would be like and what we would focus on.”
From the very beginning, Jeffries wanted to use a real, organic way of creating his brews. By letting everything come into the beer naturally, he believes it brought the beer to a whole new level that had been absent in the past.
“Some of the other breweries I had worked with over the years had done a few stainless sour beers,” he said. “Playing around with those over the years, I wasn’t happy with the results and decided that some of the problems were the lack of complexity in those beers, and that is how we decided to do all naturally sour oak-aged beers.”
Jolly Pumpkin is no stranger to acclaim, taking home a handful of awards at the Great American Beer Festival over the last decade for both its Oro de Calabaza (a 4.5% golden ale) and Bam Bière (a 4.5% dry-hopped farmhouse ale). Jolly Pumpkin has even partnered with Ohio’s own craft-beer advocates Winking Lizard to make Bambic, an oak-aged sour ale, in celebration of its 25th anniversary in 2010.
“John Lane and the Winking Lizard have always been a great supporter of our beers, pretty much from the beginning of our distribution in Ohio. For the past several years, John has asked us to be a part of the World Tour of Beers,” Jeffries said. “For their 25th anniversary, they wanted to do something special. It was a lot of fun and the beer tasted great. We are grateful for them for being such great supporters.”
The new year brings more exciting projects for Jolly Pumpkin. Along with a new expansion to the brewery, which will allow the business to increase output, Jeffries also has a new collaboration up his sleeve.
“We are hoping to build another brewery just two blocks from our existing brewery in Dexter. It’s a much larger brewhouse and will have bigger fermenters,” he said. “We are also working on a fun collaboration with Maui Brewing. We are going to doing a sour version of its beer here in Dexter and they will do a non-sour there on Maui.”
