Pumpkin beer season is here!
If you can’t tell – this excites me. I really like a good pumpkin beer, there is something about them that just makes me feel good. I associate those flavors with fall, football, and cool weather. Although the weather part isn’t quite here yet in Texas (today was 104…), football is back and fall isn’t too far behind it.
A pumpkin beer is typically a fall seasonal ale. The methods that are used to make the ale “pumpkin” vary widely based on brewer. Some brewers use hand cut chunks of pumpkin and drop them directly into the mash, others use pumpkin puree, and even others use artificial pumpkin flavoring (yuck). The beers are then spiced up – some of them taste like pumpkin pie in a glass and others take a more muted approach and choose to let the pumpkin itself shine through.
Armed with this information, I set out into the wilds of labor day beer store shopping to find some pumpkin beers for a little session drinking today. I came up with a pretty good haul of fall beers. I walked out of the store with Smashed Pumpkin from Shipyard Brewing, Pumpkick from New Belgium, Whole HogPumpkin Ale from Steven’s Point Brewing, and Pumpkin Seasonal Ale from Utah Brewer’s Cooperative . Should make for a nice evening of beer tasting  and college football with @jmae82!
We started out with the Smashed Pumpkin for Shipyard Brewing. Shipyard is based in Portland, Maine. I have had a couple of their beers before and would have to say that I REALLY enjoy their Double Old Thumper Ale. This is my first time trying their Smashed Pumpkin Ale – which is part of their Pugsley Signature Series. This series of beers seems to be some of their bigger beers, and includes things like Smashed Blueberry, XXXX IPA, and Mint Chocolate Stout (which sounds amazing…).
The Smashed Pumpkin pours a dark golden orange. The head is thick but dissipates quickly and leaves very little lacing on the glass. the beer is very clear – absolutely crystal.
The aroma of the beer is a little light, with some notes of nutmeg and clove coming through. I do wish it were a little bit stronger, but it is still nice. The malt doesn’t come through very much at all.
The taste is a quite nice. Nutmeg, graham crackers, and caramel. It’s not quite liquified pumpkin pie – the spices are muted and you can taste some of the malt. The malt comes through mostly on the back end, with a lingering sweetness and then the alcohol warms you up on the way down.
The mouthfeel is silky, but the alcohol kind of overwhelms the finish.
Overall – I really like this beer. Just spicey enough and warm enough to make it a great pumpkin beer.
Untappd rating: 3.5/5
Next up was the Whole Hog Pumpkin Ale from Steven’s Point Brewing. Steven’s Point is a brewery out of Wisconsin. I haven’t had anything from Steven’s Point, so I am excited to try this one.
The beer poured a dark orange with very little head. There was little to no lacing left on the glass.
The smell is like fresh from the oven pumpkin pie. There is a lot of nutmeg and allspice in this beer. With some cinnamon and ginger mixed in there as well. The balance is nice – it’s not entirely overwhelming.
The taste from the beer is lighter than I expected. I expected a pumpkin pie bomb, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not overwhelming notes of pumpkin pie spice, ginger, and pumpkin itself. The alcohol isn’t really present either, I would have liked a little more warming on the finish. The finish leaves me wanting.
The mouthfeel is kind of oily, but still light and the carbonation wipes away the oil fairly quickly.
Overall – not too bad. A solid beer that I would buy again.
Untappd rating: 3/5
The next entrant in this little sparring match was the Wasatch Pumpkin Ale from the Utah Brewers cooperative. This is another new brewery to me. The brewery is based in Utah (obviously) and is actually a combination of Shirf Brewing Company and Salt Lake Brewing Company. They have a wide range of beer between the two brands – everything from the Hop Rising IPA to the Polygamy Porter. Polygamy Porter caused a bit of controversy – but that is the only other time I had heard of the company.
The beer poured a dark amber with about a finger’s worth of creamy white head. This disappeared fairly quickly and left no lacing on the glass.
The smell is very nice – again with the pumpkin pie spice. It hits you right in the feels, ya know, Thanksgiving dinner with the family. Based on smell alone, this is going to be a nice spicy beer.
The taste is a little bit of a let down after the aroma. It doesn’t live up to the expectation that the great smell prepared your taste buds for – which is sad. It has plenty of pumpkin flavor – but the spices kind of hide behind an overwhelming vanilla flavor. It kind of winds up tasting like a pumpkin ice cream. Not that it’s a bad thing, just not what I expected.
The mouthfeel is light and the carbonation actually helps the flavor not be too cloying.
Overall – not horrible. Not as good as the first two and probably not something I will buy again.
Untappd rating: 3/5
The final beer in the bout is from one of my favorite breweries – Pumpkick from New Belgium. New Belgium is a Fort Collins, Colorado based brewery that I found early in my journey into craft beer. Most people have had their Fat Tire amber ale, and it’s great, but they make a ton of great beers. If you haven’t La Follie, NB’s sour ale, you’re doing something wrong with your life. I had high hopes for this beer.
The beer poured a amber color with a slight head that left a bit of lacing on the glass. This is a promising start – it looked great in the glass.
The aroma is very subtle. Some cinnamon and some cranberry – but very light on the spices.
The taste is very nice. It’s the first beer that stepped outside the pumpkin pie flavor profile – there is some earthy malt in there with the cranberry. The pumpkin is hard to find – I think that it may be part of what makes the crystal malt taste so earthy. It’s not a bad taste – but it’s not a pumpkin beer to me.
The mouthfeel is light and crisp – very nice and refreshing.
Overall – it’s a good beer. But it’s not something that I would call a pumpkin beer. It needs more pumpkin somewhere in the brewing process. Solid, but I probably wouldn’t go looking for this.
Untappd rating: 3/5
To sum all this up – these were all good beers. There wasn’t anything in the group of 4 that I would call “bad”. Three of the four followed the traditional spice model for a pumpkin beer and the New Belgium offering went off the beaten track a little bit. Of the four, I think that my favorite beer was the Smashed Pumpkin. This also may be because of the higher ABV in this beer. While the other where in the 4-7% range, the Smashed Pumpkin was a full 9%. I tend to gravitate towards higher ABV beers, they just taste better to me. I also appreciated the spice profile on this beer a little more than the others.
It’s been a fun exercise – I hope you enjoyed the ride through the pumpkin patch!
Up and Adam 
My absolute favorite pumpkin beer is SBC’s Pumking. It’s heavenly, but tragically hard to get here on the west coast.