One of the best parts of writing about beer is hearing the complaints.

This time of year, in particular, the din of kvetching is louder than a crowded tent at a beer festival. The pumpkin beer is out too early, the summer seasonals aren’t out late enough and the 30-packs of light lager are starting to take up way too much shelf space in anticipation of football season. That’s all fine.

But when you start complaining about seasonal beer in general, as if it hasn’t been with us for centuries, then that’s where I tell you to take a 750-milliliter bottle of the most obscure limited-release Russian Imperial Stout you can find and cram it. Sure, there’s a certain contingent of beer geek that will cede Oktoberfest as a holiday and maybe yield ground for Vienna Lagers and Märzen, but many of those same folks will drop an hour of the worst conversation you’ll ever have in your life explaining to you why any beer with spice in it is the devil’s work.

We don’t condone violence here at MarketWatch and certainly wouldn’t want to see good beer wasted while poured over said geek’s head, especially since there’s no need for it. As we mentioned last week, seasonal beer makes up 15% to 25% of the more than $19.6 billion in annual craft beer sales, according to market-research firm IRI. The Brewers Association craft beer industry group notes that India Pale Ale typically outsells seasonal beer by roughly 300,000 cases, with IPA making up 23% of all sales in 2014, but typically wipe out IPA’s lead once fall beer season arrives. In fact, seasonal variety packs make up 21% of all craft beer sales by volume.

Granted, pumpkin ale still accounts for a whole lot of that fall surge, but there are several other autumn seasonals out there that are worth your time. To start you off, here are 10 of our favorites that represent a broad array of non-pumpkin fall beers that are just coming into the fold. Feel free to drop some suggestions of your own, keeping in mind that there’s just about no way we’re going to be able to hit all 3,700 or so breweries in the U.S. with a 10-beer list:

Oro de Calabaza, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Dexter, Mich.

Jolly Pumpkin Brewing Co.

Nothing pumpkin about this beer but the brewery’s name, folks. Nope, this is actually an excellent year-round take on the Bière de Garde style brewed in France and Belgium, but originating from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France. Ordinarily, we’d recommend something more akin to 3 Monts from France’s Brasserie de Saint-Sylvestre or many of the beers from Brasserie La Choulette, but Jolly Pumpkin’s Oro de Calabaza is the finest example we can find stateside and the best chance you’ll have to taste it fresh. With hints of pepper and coriander spicing, this almost-Champagne-flavored golden ale, with 8% alcohol by volume, hides fairly well behind a fizzy fall nightcap.

Oktoberfest, Great Lakes Brewing Co., Cleveland, Ohio

Great Lakes Brewing Co.

To purists, only six breweries make actual Oktoberfestbier: Spaten, Löwenbräu, Augustiner-Bräu, Hofbräu-München, Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr. That means for anyone making an Oktoberfest in Ohio — within driving distance of Hofbräuhaus locations in Columbus, Cincinnati-adjacent Newport, Ky., and Cleveland itself — it pays to make classic Märzen. More biscuity than the traditional Oktoberfest beers, which have lightened from caramel-colored Märzen and Vienna Lagers to a more baguette-bodied pale lager, Great Lakes’ Oktoberfest is smooth, deeply amber and slightly more potent than a standard Oktoberfest at 6.5% ABV. There’s a lot of craft beer in this country with the Oktoberfest label, but this is one of the few that hews closely to Bavarian tradition.

Northern Hemisphere Harvest Wet Hop IPA, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, Calif.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

It’s been about 20 years since brewer Bert Grant first picked hops in Washington’s Yakima Valley, brought them back to his Yakima Brewing Co. and used them in a batch of his Fresh Hop Ale without drying them. Since then, brewers throughout the Pacific Northwest and Northern California have used this method during each hop harvest to create pale ale and IPA with all of the red grapefruit flavor of traditional West Coast IPA while blunting the bitterness. Sierra Nevada made its own version a short time thereafter, but fluctuated between calling the hops used “green hops,” “fresh hops” and “wet hops.” It settled on the latter to distinguish them from dried “fresh” hops that were just the freshest picked. The 6.7% ABV Northern Hemisphere Harvest Ale is still made with fresh Cascade and Centennial hops from Yakima that go from the vines to the brew kettles in 24 hours. However, Sierra now makes several Harvest varieties using hops from locations around the world. Still, if you can’t be in the Northwest for Harvest season, this is about the best and most widely available consolation prize you can ask for.

Harvest, Long Trail Brewing Co., Bridgewater Corners, Vt.

Long Trail Brewing Co.

We’ve put this on a lot of our fall beer lists and we aren’t going to stop because, quite frankly, it’s one of the few beers produced in foliage-happy Vermont that actually tastes like fall. Long Trail, which has been making beer in Vermont long before hop-addled neighbors like Hill Farmstead and Heady Topper-producing The Alchemist opened shop, still sees the value in the mild brown ale favored by the first generation of microbrewers. Long Trail’s Harvest flows over a drinker’s palate with hints of brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup and roasted nuts and, at 4.4% ABV, doesn’t have a citrusy hop bite or the wine notes of Belgian yeast, but it’s a fine beer for watching the leaves fall just before stoking the evening fire.

Autumn Maple, The Bruery, Placentia, Calif.

The Bruery

Pumpkin beer? Played out. Yam beer? That’s what’s up.

It uses a formula similar to that of a pumpkin beer — cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla, molasses and maple syrup — and substitutes the fall tuber of note for the overexposed gourd. The result is basically candied yam-flavored brown ale that’s fairly potent at 10% ABV but seasonally sweet. While 750-milliliter bottles of standard-issue Autumn Maple are a pretty easy find in the states that the Bruery distributes to, we highly recommend tracking down the bourbon-barrel-aged Autumn Maple if you just happen to be near Orange County.

(Please see the next page for five more fall beers without pumpkin.)

Autumn Ale, Breckenridge Brewery, Breckenridge, Colo.

Breckenridge Brewery

If you find yourself torn between your favorite fall beer styles, just hit all of them. Autumn Ale blends the pecan-flavored Munich malt of a Märzen with the roasted grain and deep coloring of a brown ale or light stout. At 6.7% ABV, it isn’t some lightweight fall beer, but it’s just the fresh-baked treat you need to usher in the nippier weather.

Thundercone Fresh Hop Ale, McMenamins, various locations in Oregon and Washington

McMenamins Inc.

The McMenamin brothers brought brewpubs to Oregon and later expanded their empire throughout nearly two dozen locations in the Pacific Northwest, but this is the time of year it seems less like a local chain and more like the long-tenured local it is. The fact that it serves its beer at its myriad restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, golf courses and resorts — sometimes in plastic tumblers during a $3 showing of “Mad Max: Fury Road” — doesn’t detract from its quality and consistency. Thundercone is a fine example of all of the above and is made with 1,000 pounds of Cascade hops that are rushed from a farm in Salem, Ore., to every McMenamins brewing location. Much milder than all those hops would suggest, the 6.2% ABV beer smells of grapefruit, but has a mild flavor more akin to a session IPA, thanks to a combination of Pilsner and Belgian Caramel malts. Flowery on the nose and earthy on the tongue, Thundercone is a well-balanced fresh-hop beer that we wish was distributed just a bit further afield.

Festbier, Victory Brewing Co., Downingtown, Pa.

Victory Brewing Co.

No, we weren’t going to include just one Märzen on this list, and we weren’t going to leave Pennsylvania out of this big German brewing party. Just know, however, that Victory adds some additional citrusy bitterness to biscuity Vienna and Munich malts to give just enough of a respite from its sweetness to catch his or her attention. At 5.6% ABV, it isn’t nearly as strong as its hop content would suggest. It’s also just mild enough to sneak into the Oktoberfest mix and pleasantly surprise drinkers normally put off by a malty style.

SurlyFest, Surly Brewing Co., Brooklyn Center, Minn.

Surly Brewing Co.

Nope, this isn’t a German-style anything. There’s Vienna malt in it, sure, but it’s overpowered with Sterling Hop aroma and beaten back by three kinds of rye. Those expecting a sweet, malty flavor are getting rye bread and a faintly piney aroma instead. Surly isn’t the type of brewery to play a style straight, and the beer in this 16-ounce can doesn’t have much Oktober to it. In a season filled with festbiers, however, that isn’t a bad thing.

Pecan Harvest Ale, Abita Brewing Co., Abita Springs, La.

Abita Brewing Co.

Hazelnut brown ales are great and all, but like hazelnut coffee, they’re usually short on actual nuts. Abita smells like roasted pecans and has a bit of pecan flavor on the finish, but there’s still a whole lot of Munich, biscuit and caramel malt typical of Oktoberfest. At 5.1% ABV, it’s a tasty little brown ale that’s a fine fit for pecan pie season.

Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.