Imagine a bleak alternative reality where no new hop varieties were ever developed or evolved. Brewers still use them, but just for bittering. That’s it. And when harvest comes around every year, there are no fresh hop beers, because they would all just taste like dirt and earth and grass. BUT, in their place, pumpkin beers fill the craft beer landscape – flooding the Fall market with vegetable beers. Every warm shelf and tap is taken over by jack-o-lantern themed beers with names like “YUM YUM PUMPKIN!” and “DREAMY HALLOWEENY” and “PUMP FLUFF MUFFIN” that make you want to stab your jugular with a pumpkin carving knife. And, every single offering has that blend of familiar spices, but at least they vary in color and base style. Some breweries are so prolific in their pumpkin brewing prowess that they not only attract attention from every beer nerd, but also Big Beer. AB-Inbev sees this growing market and wants -NEEDS- to be a player in it, so they start buying up independent breweries, one by one, slowly at first, then at rampant pace, until they confuse the consumer with so many options nobody knows who owns what anymore, creating customer indifference in ownership and operations and origins among the sea of SKUs, where only the deepest of pockets prevail, squeezing out small, independent, locally-owned and operated breweries until there are few left.  In this Cantwellian Dystopia, THIS beer would be KING – a milk chocolatey base beer brewed with Libby’s canned pumpkin and spiced with a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and clove. OK WAKE UP! It was all a dream…WAIT BUT…