You might, like me, find yourself reaching for a pumpkin beer this fall as you take in the changing colors. In every sip is a distinctly American tradition, brought to us not through central planning but instead by decentralized knowledge, ingenuity and experimentation.

The earliest known recipe for a pumpkin beer dates to 1771, and it is one of the few uniquely American styles of beer. The colonists, lacking easy access to malted grain, turned to more readily available sources of sugar for brewing. They brewed with molasses, persimmons, and pumpkins, with varying degrees of success. They did this not because an authority told them it was the best way to make beer but because they responded to scarcity. If they wanted a beer, they had to get creative. They had to experiment.

Pumpkin beer fell out of favor in time, as malt became easier to come by. But it reemerged in the mid-1980s, as Bill Owens, founder of Buffalo Bill’s Brewery in the San Franciso Bay Area, rediscovered recipes used during the colonial era.

According to lore, George Washington’s technique of using gourds and pumpkins caught Owens’ eye. Owens decided to replicate it the best he could. He found that pumpkins did not add much flavor. Owens was in the business of brewing craft beer for paying customers, and they were (probably) not keen to pay a premium for a specialty beer that didn’t meet their expectations. So he kept experimenting. His next batch ditched the pumpkin, adding instead pumpkin pie spices.

And so the first modern pumpkin beer was brewed.

The story of modern-day pumpkin beer is not a rare example of mankind reacting to the market, substituting one product for another. My colleague Michael Van Beek is quick to point out (with assistance from AI) that bourbon, applejack, and root beer came about from similar circumstances: People had to substitute one scarce ingredient for something more plentiful. Disruptions to the tin trade helped usher in the Iron Age, as Mackinac Center scholar and college professor Alex Tokarev recently explained at a public event. To expand on his point, the great palace kingdoms of the Late Bronze Age were centralized and depended on long-distance trade, but with tin scarce, people turned to a new, more readily available solution. No government office or blue-ribbon panel called for a transition from bronze to iron, but the transition led in time to better products. It also provided benefits that few could have foreseen. Farmers could eventually afford iron tools and even weapons. Metalworkers could operate outside of a centralized government, and they could participate in the local markets.

Scarcity is a reality of life, no matter which economic system you might be under. What matters is what we do about it. A central planner can allocate visible resources, but colonial brewers realized that pumpkins could be a stand-in for malt. Centuries later, a businessman realized that he could reinvent a historic style of beer by using pumpkin pie spices.

Knowledge is a powerful tool for improving human life, and innovation occurs when people are free to experiment and reap the rewards when they get something right. That is how scarcity leads to innovation, and how we get products no single person could have planned for.

So if you’re like me and decide to crack open a Dogfish Head Punkin Ale, Griffin Claw Screamin’ Pumpkin, or New Holland Ichabod, or if you’re like Van Beek and prefer bourbon, remember that no one planned the drink you have in your hand. It came from people facing scarcity, free to experiment, and determined to have a cold beer or stiff bourbon after a hard day’s work.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.