“Eclectic and Weird”: ACB Visits Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in Dexter, MI

When Ron Jeffries began brewing the original test batches for Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in Dexter, MI, a pale ale was considered “really crazy” in the craft beer industry. But Jeffries took crazy to a new level when he turned his evolving business plan into a craft brewery focused on sours. “We saw a spot in the market for French and Belgian beers. No one in the US had an emphasis on sours,” explains Jeffries – so he and his wife Laurie opened the sour-focused Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in 2004. As it stands today, Jolly Pumpkin is known as the only brewery that ages all of its beers in oak barrels and is the only US brewery to make its name brewing only sours.

Although the brewery has seen phenomenal success in recent years, JP had its share of challenges, as all pioneers do. From the distribution side, Ron struggled to find wholesalers who wanted to buy sours. From the customer side, he repeatedly received emails from customers warning him that they had a “bad batch” of JP beer and that it had turned sour (he stills receives those emails today). When JP opened its doors nine years ago, “the consumer wasn’t there and the consumer education wasn’t there” explains Ron.

That all changed around the year 2010, when JP began to see rapid growth. They eventually outgrew their facility in the heart of Dexter and are currently in the process of moving to a new, larger plant a mile down the road. They’re “maxed out at capacity” in the current space and are projecting that the 50,000 square foot production floor in the new location – along with distribution in almost every state – will allow sales to double within the next year.

ACB sat down with Ron to learn the secrets of Jolly Pumpkin’s success, and the conversation naturally drifted to the brewery’s memorable name. “Jolly Pumpkin was the goofiest name on the list,” Ron offers as an explanation. As Ron and Laurie sat on their porch sipping beer and brainstorming identities for the brewery, Jolly Pumpkin was the name that stuck, despite the fact that the brewery did not brew any pumpkin beers for the first five years of its existence. It was at the behest of another craft brewery, Elysian Brewing Company in Seattle, that Jolly Pumpkin first ventured into the pumpkin beer arena. Elysian asked JP for a pumpkin sour for their annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival, and Ron obliged. He sold every last pumpkin batch to Elysian that year, and the local JP fans were less than thrilled. Thus was born Jolly Pumpkin’s seasonal pumpkin beer, La Parcela, one of eight seasonals in JP’s fleet.

Besides their self-described “eclectic and weird” name, Ron spent time reflecting on what else has made Jolly Pumpkin and the craft beer industry as a whole successful in the past decade. He attributes much of the industry’s success to the culture and personalities of the brewers themselves. “Brewers get the local movement,” he muses, “pretty much every craft brewer I’ve met is environmentally conscious.” He also describes his colleagues as “civic-minded” and “convivial” – both traits that, based on the afternoon I spent with him, Ron exemplifies. Ron calls this alignment of common values the “aloha spirit – if you have that and go out in the community it will come back to you. We’re all connected by a liquid river of beer and the enjoyment that goes along with it.”

Well said, Ron. Cheers to sour beers, and mahalo!