Pumpkin Ale Now, Ice Bumper Cars in November: Land-Grant's Beer Garden Has No Offseason

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COLUMBUS, Ohio: At Land-Grant Brewing Company, fall is not the wind-down to winter. According to Rachel Rudy, it is one of the brewery’s favorite times of year, and the tap list proves it.

Four seasonal pours anchor the fall lineup. Patch Pumpkin Ale is an amber ale brewed with cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg and allspice, landing somewhere close to a slice of pumpkin pie in a glass. The house-made Spiced Apple Cider is fermented with the brewery’s own yeast and spiced with cinnamon, cardamom and ginger. Skull Session Vienna Lager pours copper-colored with notes of fresh bread and toast, and Bierzelt Festbier, Land-Grant’s take on a traditional German Festbier, is brewed with Ohio-grown pilsner malt and European hops. Come November, the board turns toward the holidays, with Tree Lot Holiday Ale and Beard Crumbs Oatmeal Cookie Stout rotating back on.

The beer garden stays busy deep into October, with Tuesday trivia and movie nights and music trivia on Thursdays running through the end of the month, plus a jumbo screen pulling crowds for football and playoff baseball. Sweatshirt weather, Rudy said, produces some of the garden’s favorite nights of the year.

For food, Ray Ray’s Hog Pit is on site Wednesday through Sunday. For a first-timer, Rudy builds the order around the Meatsweats, a box carrying a little of everything Ray Ray’s does best: smoked brisket, pulled pork, jerk chicken, dry-rubbed ribs and the signature hot link, with pickles and sauce. Her pairing is the Skull Session Vienna Lager, whose toasted, bready malt notes play off the smoke and stay crisp enough to balance a heavy plate.

Next door, the Gravity Experience Park has changed what a visit looks like, stretching a beer stop into a whole afternoon or evening. Pickleball season wraps up in mid-October, and then the transformation starts. On November 27, Wintergarden opens, built around a full-size outdoor ice rink where guests drive motorized, inflatable bumper cars with joysticks, no skating skill required, with new all-day reservations good for unlimited rides. Five lanes of brewery curling join the lineup.

The heated igloos return the same day, upgraded this year to brand-new, larger polycarbonate igloos with all-new furniture and QR code ordering that delivers beers right to the igloo door. Friday through Sunday reservations fill quickly, Rudy said, especially around the holidays, so anyone with a date in mind should book early. The message for Columbus is simple: at Land-Grant, winter is a season, not a closing date.

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