Editor’s Note: Ron Jeffries, who founded the Dexter, Michigan-based Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, died in October 2024. This week the Brewers Association will posthumously award him the Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation in Craft Brewing during the Craft Brewers Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The Beer: Ron
ABV: 5.5%
The Brewery: Embrace the Funk, Madison, Tennessee
The Brewer: Brandon Jones
The beer was originally conceived in 2017. Ron and Jolly Pumpkin were still hosting Zwanze Day, and they invited us to come pour some beers. I was stoked. I had spoken with Ron throughout the years and about many things: pizza, skateboarding, beer, things like that. But I was stoked to go because I had only met Ron once.
Then I started thinking, if I was going all the way up to Dexter, Michigan, I wonder if they would deem me worthy to brew a batch. And Ron’s like, “Oh, heck, yeah, let’s do that.”
We knew that it had to be something kind of in the inspiration of saison but also kind of tropical. Draw your inspiration from where you know. Ron liked to spend his time out on the waves. So, we came up with this five and a half percent spelt based saison with black lava salt, tangerine peel and rainbow peppercorns. To add a little bit of Tennessee to it, I brought up some rose hips but we didn’t end up using them because they got messed up in the transport from TSA, so we couldn’t use them.
This was the beer where I was introduced to Michigan hops. I knew that there were some hops being grown in the Midwest and Michigan, and Ron said he was really liking the locally grown Chinook. I could see why. When I got to smell them for the first time, I was blown away with how citrusy they were.
We brewed this collaboration with yeast I brought up and with yeast Ron had. It was an open ferment and it was really hot that September, something failed in the open-top fermenter and it got some fruit flies in it, and before it was transferred it went acidic and so we were never able to release that beer.
Ron and I kept talking about redoing it and unfortunately, we ran out of time for fellowship and hanging out.
I was in Belgium when I heard that Ron had passed. I immediately thought of our beer and wanted to brew it again to keep his memory alive. His wife Laurie gave her blessing, and of course I named the beer Ron.
She thought Ron would be completely honored, which absolutely floored me that somebody of his stature would be honored that I made a beer. So I brewed up a batch using all the same ingredients. I did omit the rose hips, since we didn’t use them in the first batch. I was able to source all the Michigan hops, and everything else we used.
I put it on the label, but Ron was a pioneer. Ron is a first name person. For my generation, he paved the trail for us. We wouldn’t be able to do these things had Ron not already knocked on the doors for us for getting these styles of beer notice, getting them on menus, setting them out in their taprooms.
That’s how you get people to learn about it. During that era of craft beer in the US, Ron took that old world knowledge and combined it with this American new world way of brewing it and did it his own style.
That was one thing that made Ron so special, was that the Jolly Pumpkin beers were distinctly Ron Jeffries beers. I mean, you knew you were drinking a Ron Jeffries beer, even if it was a hoppy one or a very spiced one, or a very fruity one, or even just a beer with minimal adjuncts and minimal hops, and you knew that because it had that Ron touch to it.
If you have a bottle, there’s no reason to cellar it.
Me doing this beer without Ron is proof that you should just do the thing. Just drink the beer. Do the thing. Have the fun. Enjoy it. Don’t save this beer for several years. It’s meant to be enjoyed and to celebrate somebody that put forth a lot into this whole beer thing, not just in the US, but globally.
So just open the beer, celebrate. Give a little toast, maybe pour a little bit out. And have fun.
Are you a brewer with a beer inspiration story that you would like featured on All About Beer? Contact editor John Holl via email JohnHoll@AllAboutBeer.com