My friend Courtney, a Cisco aficionado, said it's been more pumpkin-y in years past. Both pumpkin and pumpkin spice are in there somewhere, but not at the forefront. This was a letdown.Ĭisco Brewing Pumple Drumkin: In a blind taste test you wouldn't know this was a pumpkin beer. We didn't get any pumpkin notes, nor did we find the beer to be particularly sweet. Waves of cinnamon hit you, and then nothing. After taking one sip my friend Kevin said, "It tastes like someone dumped cinnamon in a glass." We were all in agreement. Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale: Shipyard makes a lot of this beer, and we were curious to try it in the context of others. As we went on through the tasting, we found nothing better. The more you sip, the better this beer becomes. Spice hits you up front and also lingers throughout, preventing the pumpkin flavor from overpowering. There's a nice, pumpkin-y sour smell to this beer that blends with delicious pie spices. Southampton Pumpkin Ale: Finally some balance. We had high hopes for this beer that weren't met. And yet after all that sweetness, there's a sour gourd aftertaste, undoubtedly from real pumpkins but unwelcome nonetheless. The cinnamon overwhelms this beer my friend compared it to drinking a bottle of perfume. Southern Tier "Pumking": Back to the opposite end of the spectrum. At about half the ABV of the previous offering, this was a big contrast. I liked this beer very much, but one of my friends wanted a bit more oomph. The spices are subtle and the finish of the beer is dry. CBC, one of the best brewpubs in the country, offers a pumpkin beer that tastes like real pumpkins. Exceptional.Ĭambridge Brewing Company Great Pumpkin Ale: Two beers in and the existential crisis begins. This is what Shipyard's pumpkin beer should be. My wife said it tastes like pumpkin cookies. This is a special beer to drink on special occasions there's a subtle sweetness but it's not cloying, nor is it too spicy. Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin: An intensified version of Shipyard's flagship beer, Smashed Pumpkin weighs in at a whopping 9 percent ABV. I'll review the beers in the order we tasted them. Because many different styles were represented here we didn't rank the beers, but we've identified the best of the bunch as beers you should be seeking out. Hopefully this can serve as a guide for pumpkin beer fans as the fall beer season continues. It's hard to judge a bunch of pumpkin beers if you can't agree on what a pumpkin beer is.įear not, pumpkin drinkers, we were still able to draw plenty of conclusions on the beers we sampled, and we came up with our favorites. So what's a pumpkin beer? Is it a beer that tastes like pumpkins, the vegetable? Is it a beer with pumpkin-pie spices like cinnamon and nutmeg? A beer that fits into your festive notions of Halloween? (or is it Thanksgiving?) We were overthinking things, of course, but our intentions were good. These beers weren't made to taste like one another. Stringing together commonalities between beers not only proved difficult but at times seemed misguided. In some cases, a beer tasted like it belonged to a totally different style. As we sampled an admittedly ambitious lineup of 12 pumpkin beers, we found ourselves asking, "What's a pumpkin beer supposed to taste like?" Let's face it, at 4.Drinking pumpkin beer shouldn't be the cause of an existential crisis, but that was the position my wife, our two friends, and myself found ourselves in this week when tasting beer for this story. Pumpkin beers have come a long way since Pumpkinhead's creation and I think it holds up nicely to the competition out there - especially now that it's a bit sweeter. OK, I'm aging myself haha! I can tell the recipe has been tweaked a little over the years - it's definitely sweeter than I remember it being. So thanks, Shipyard! I often go to Portland, Maine for my birthday and back in the day would pack the car full of Pumpkinhead cases to bring home! It wasn't widely distributed like it is now and I remember how stoked I was when it finally came to Connecticut. Honestly, I think this beer started the whole pumpkin beer craze if you ask me. I think it was the first pumpkin beer I, (Meg), had. We also want to take a minute to talk about Shipyard's first love, Pumpkinhead.
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