Some fun little tidbits in today's news round-up. Let's get to it!

This is an article from last month, though it fell in a gap between Six-Packs of News, but with the calendar now flipped to September, this seems relevant. Draft Magazine reported about a shortage of pumpkins to create fall beers. While the shortage is in its second consecutive year, many brewers are finding ways (though, not without headaches) to make up for the shortage, including leveraging additional pumpkin suppliers or acquiring excess stores of pumpkin puree. We will have to watch the next couple of seasons to see if this shortage becomes more critical for brewers.

Draft Magazine also recently posted an article noting 5 key beer statistics, including most successful new brands and multiple analyses about craft beer growth.

Next, there is a football game being played this Saturday at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee. Up to 160,000 people are expected to be in attendance for the game between Virginia Tech and the University of Tennessee, and ESPN's David Hale reports that over half a million beers have been ordered for the game.

A company called BetterBuys, which I would best classify as a business optimization consultant, recently discussed brewery automation with six Philadelphia-area craft breweries and tried to find out if such automation took the "romance" out of brewing for these brewers.

Earlier this week, Vinepair columnist Will Gordon posted a list of the "8 best beer bargains". This list includes 7 great craft beers and Pabst Blue Ribbon. They can't all be winners, I guess.

Finally, just today, Vinepair also released their rankings of the 50 states in the US, based on number of craft breweries and gallons of craft beer. My own South Carolina clocks in way down in the low 40s, with just over 1 brewery and 0.7 gallons produced per 100,000 adults 21+. Find your own state here.

On a personal note, today marks the unofficial one-year anniversary of Pourly Reviewed Beer. Between this day in 2015 and October 27, 2015, I made a whopping SIX beer-related blog posts. Thus, I consider the OFFICIAL one-year anniversary the day I started writing with true consistency: October 28, 2015. I will have much more to say on that date. Still, this is a bit of a landmark, and I just want to thank everyone who has read this blog, and special thanks to my family for their support.