Pumpkin shortage

[john mills]

it appears there is a pumpkin shortage, or outage. It seems that there have been adverse growing conditions for pumpkins the previous two growing seasons. I can't find any canned pumpkin to make my pumpkin beer. eBay has canned pumpkin for $15/can! I know there are breweries turning out pumpkin beers without pumpkin in them, just the pumpkin pie spices, but I'm a purist. My plan is to use fresh sweet potato instead. Sweet potato beer fermented with Fantome yeast? Now that sounds funky.

[sirgiovanni]

I heard about this last year and bought 4 cans.
Does that make you feel better?

[Chris Alvey]

Interesting - my pumpkins died this year too and I was a bit bummed. Did they say why?

[john mills]

I heard about this last year and bought 4 cans.
Does that make you feel better?

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king!
But, I already bought the sweet potato and will give it a try. If it doesn't work, I'll have to sharecrop the 8% pumpkin beer with you.

[Dutch]

Two things:
1] There is a major stack of canned pumpkin at the Rural King St Joes and Diamond.
2] There is someone near Ressurection and Diamond [actually on Diamond just East of Ress] with a big field of pumpkins that look like they are about ready!

[john mills]

Thanks Dutch. I picked up the pumpkin, and am going to do a split batch now. We can vertical taste test the difference between pumpkin and sweet potato when they're ready. Maybe this year I'll have something left for November.

[sirgiovanni]

going to do a split batch now. We can vertical taste test the difference between pumpkin and sweet potato when they're ready.

COOL!

[sirgiovanni]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39379122/?Gt1=43001