From New Belgium:
Ft. Collins, Colo., September 30, 2013/mbb/ – With fall officially here and pumpkin beers flying off the shelves, New Belgium decided to challenge other pumpkin-beer-making, craft brewers to a carving contest. New Belgium and six craft breweries have put their knife skills to the test and the final pumpkins for The Big Craft CarveOff are on display at NewBelgium.com/CraftCarveOff. Public voting for the favorite begins October 3 and runs through October 15 at Eater.com. New Belgium will donate $5,000 to a charity of the winner’s choice.
“There’s a proud tradition of pumpkin beer brewing every fall among craft brewers and we figured a great way to celebrate the change of seasons is a good old-fashioned carving contest” said New Belgium Spokesperson, Bryan Simpson. “Several of our brewing buddies jumped on board and did amazing, magical feats to transform simple gourds into works of art.”
New Belgium’s carved entry celebrates its current seasonal release, Pumpkick Ale. Pumpkick is brewed with plenty of pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, but it is the healthy dose of cranberries that really makes it stand out.
Other breweries participating in the carving contest include: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Brooklyn Brewery, Cigar City Brewing, Cambridge Brewing Company, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Saint Arnold and Schlafly Beer.
“It was a little tricky for some breweries to find pumpkins this early in the season, so we actually had to ship some from Fort Collins,” added Simpson. “The results speak volumes as to how many creative folks we have in our industry. Pretty inspiring. ”
To keep up with the contest, you can follow the hashtag #CraftCarveOff on Twitter and Instagram. New Belgium will also post updates athttp://www.newbelgium.com/CraftCarveoff, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/newbelgium and on Twitter @NewBelgium. If you have a pumpkin you’d like to show off, use #CraftCarveOff to post your pumpkin pictures on Twitter and Instagram.
UPDATE: 
We were sitting around a while back, meeting about things. Pumpkick, our new fall seasonal, was forthcoming and we were trying to figure a good way to tell people about it. Then we got to thinking about how great pumpkin beer season is, and how many great pumpkin beers are out there, and how a lot of great breweries make great pumpkin beers. Then we started thinking about how fun it is to carve pumpkins and then– BOOM! The Great American Craft Beer Carve Off! We decided to challenge a bunch of other breweries to a pumpkin carving contest, judged by and voted on by you, the fans of great pumpkin beers. We also needed to put some stakes behind it, so we're giving the winning brewery $5000 to donate to the charitable cause of their choice. It's a win-win for everyone.
The only hiccup we could foresee was how to get the voting accomplished in a way that was socially based, not hosted on our website, and accessible to all the fans of all the involved breweries. Eater.com is a pretty cool site. It tells folks about stuff to eat and where to eat it, as well as news in the food world and stuff. And it's very cool that they agreed to host the contest, atEater.com.
So, here we are, pumpkins carved up and ready. Let's introduce the line up (above)
A lot of amazing pumpkins in there... And a lot on the line: $5,000 to charity, pride, bragging rights, etc...
So go vote, early and often (just kidding (Eater.com will only let you vote once (no vote rigging here!))). And don't forget to tell your friends on the networks– #CraftCarveOff is the call sign, let's get it done.
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