Y-all come back now, ya-hear?

It looks like time got away from us for the 2011 year of the pumpkin, that, and the fact that we moonlight as aspiring scholars. Sadly, the pumpkin beer season is short-- running from mid-August through late October-- and we are almost out of stock. So many beers left untasted, so many brands that we've yet to review. We'll be back in 2012, ready and raring to try new beers, revisit old friends, and pay homage to that glorious old gal, the pumpkin beer.

In shutting it down for now, the Pumpcourt wishes you a pleasant off-season full of delicious winter, spring, and summer seasonal brews.

Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale

Available in regular six packs, Weyerbacher Pumpkin tastes like the kind of beer one expects to get in a bomber or growler. (It's priced that way too-- be ready to pay ten bucks or more for a sixer). Indeed, at 8.0% ABV, a pint of this delicious brew is all you really need to get a pleasant buzz on; drinking a full six pack, or even splitting it with the estimable Pumpking, will get you drunk in a hurry. (Which explains, in part, why there is only review going up today. Like the Dwarves of Moria, we dug too deeply and too greedily into the chilled beerstock last night). The bold taste, too, suggests something that traditionally comes in a singular, large serving size. It's got that special, "there can be only one" je ne sais quoi. Like the Pumpking bomber, more than one of these is simply glutinous. We recommend starting a beery night with Weyerbacher, and then moving on to more manageable brews, like Saranac or Blue Point. 

But this is definitely a beer worth trying. The craft brewery, out of Easton, PA, boasts that their product is "the mother of all pumpkin ales... heartier, spicier, and more 'caramelly' and 'pumpkiny' than its faint brethren." They got the first part right, in any case. Upon the pour, sift&sniff, and first taste, one is treated to an indulgent (if slightly overwhelming) burst of caramel as well as strong hints of cinnamon, like a pumpkin infused Twix Bar. To be sure, then, Weyerbacher upon first blush is among the sweetest pumpkin beers available, comparable to UFO in its prime (see post below). What makes the brew interesting is that it mellows after the first few sips-- or perhaps the taste buds acclimatize-- becoming somehow robust instead of deliriously saccharine. It grows more balanced as you drink it down. Does Weyerbacker live up to its claims of achieving optimal pumpkinyness, you might justifiably ask? That depends on your definition of pumpkiny. If you want your pumpkin flavor to resemble reduced-sugar pie filling, then yes sir, that's your baby; if you are looking something with a little more bite (and why wouldn't you when purchasing a self-proclaimed imperial ale?) you might be disappointed. We were assuredly not disappointing, however. I wish I could tell you more about it, but as I say, drinking more than one of them may cause impaired judgment and memory lapses, among other things. Oops.

From the haze of last night, though, this at least is a true statement: Weyerbacher Pumpkin is a gem of a beer. Grade: A-.

UFO Pumpkin

I'm searching for a stronger word to describe UFO pumpkin, but so far the best I've come up with is "uneven." But to an epic degree. UFO was the first pumpkin beer to arrive on the scene in Upstate New York, surfacing in area bars and the grocery store in late August, and going for a reasonable $7.99 a six pack. If we had been a little less lazy and reviewed UFO right away, it would have received a glowing report. Our first encounter with UFO was magical; we raised our glasses joyfully to toast in the fall, and found, to our great pleasure, a very sweet inauguration. The beer was so rich and creamy, like drinking pumpkin pie, that we took to calling it a dessert beer.  It could have been served Starbucks-style, with a frothy whipcream head and delicious, delicious sprinkles. Although the beer had already been amply spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, we enjoyed its flavor so much that we proposed drinking it with a box of graham crackers (a proposal ultimately shot down when it was determined that no city bar currently stocks cookies of any kind) and treating the brew like pie filling. Improving matters further, the Pumpking chatted up the regional UFO representative at the bar and was rewarded with free beer. Looking back now, we should have known trouble was on the horizon. Things this good don't last.

Flash forward to present. Something, somewhere went terribly, terribly wrong. That, or something's rotten in Rochester. In the weeks since UFO first won our hearts, they have broken them many times over. Now what I am about to disclose is shocking, so before you start to question me, gentle reader, know this: we have bought six packs at different times and from different stores to try to cast a wide net and produce a fair sample size. To no avail. Over the last month, the once mighty UFO has gone sour. LITERALLY. The beer tastes skunky and unpleasant, still pumpkiny but quite spoiled, like the brewery either used fresh ingredients that don't age well or they got a bad batch of canned pumpkin after their initially-successful launch (and admittedly this is UFO's first stab at pumpkin beer; the rep told us while dispensing freebies and pleasantries).  While drinking their recent stuff I imagined that last, saddest pumpkin left in the patch-- lumpy, moldy, bruised, soggy, unlovable except to a Charlie Brown. Then I imagined that UFO guy grabbing it up, throwing it in the hopper, and rubbing his hands together gleefully  (and possibly twirling a newly-grown mustache) at his fiendish plot: the old bait-and-switch. Give 'um the good stuff, get 'um hooked, and then dole out a line of crappy replacement product.

UFO has shrunk in our estimation from nearly first to nearly the worst. Original UFO: A+/ Current iteration: D-. Yikes.

Heavy Seas-- The Great Pumpkin

Well, so much for improved diligence.

So, the Great Pumpkin, eh? Let's be clear, there are definitely a few things that are great about this beer: its name (nice homage to a Halloween classic), its size (you can only get them in 22oz bombers), and its coloring (when held against soft light after being poured in a glass, er, goblet, the beer projects multicolored layers of oranges and browns-- kind of like a tequila sunrise but with autumn colors). Another great thing about this beer is the story of how the Pumpking and I acquired it. While shopping at Beers of the World, a massive store which delivers everything promised in the name, we made a beeline for their special "seasonal beers" shelf to see what was new in pumpkindom. A lot, apparently. However, they only had one Heavy Seas bomber left in stock. I made to grab for it just as another fellow, less regal in countenance and dress, did the same. I beat him by seconds, and, after an awkward moment of staring at each other, he deferred to me, admitting that I won the beer "fair and square."

Good thing, because this is hardly a beer worth fighting over. Priced at about ten bucks a bomber, we were expecting great things from the Great Pumpkin, a beer described as "imperial" on a label which is otherwise sadly marred by superfluous pirate cliches. An example, you say? How about "Its Extraaaaaaaardninary," as the bearded sea-rat on the front of the bottle claims. If only.  The beer tastes, to an extraaaaardinary degree, like last year's disappointing Pumpking ale. That is, it starts off incredibly sweet upon initial taste, but the longer one allows it to linger over the palate, the more bitter it becomes. A study in contrasts is an interesting thing, naturally, but it lent this beer a certain mercurial flavor. It couldn't decide whether it wanted to please us with buttery, creamy pumpkin pie sweetness and light, or blast us with the imperial stout lurking beneath the surface. Ultimately, as we split the brew, it decided to try for both and achieved neither. The more our taste buds grew accustomed to Great Pumpkin, the more nondescript it became. By the half-way point of consumption, the beer became bland-- drinkable but not desirable. Quite a head-scratcher, really. Heavy Seas is a tricky little blighter to figure out, and in the end the effort is hardly justified.

In all, a strange creature of a beer. It's worth trying once if you're looking to make the rounds, but if you are only in the market for solid pumpkin beer pass this one by. B-/C+.

Blue Point Pumpkin Ale

Before beginning this review, a word of apology. The PumKing and I have been derelict in our reviewing duties-- I, the Duke, was recently betrothed and subsequently away from my desk-- but we have not been idle. At the wedding, an event of special magnificence, to borrow a phrase, we sampled many fine pumpkin beers on draft and indulged in countless bottles of Saranac Pumpkin. Then, upon my return, we surveyed the new lay of the pumpkin land and acquired some half dozen new brands to try. We pledge a more diligent posting policy in the weeks ahead as fall and fall beer approaches peak season.

Accordingly, we turn now to Blue Point Pumpkin Ale. The PumKing and I shared a certain high amount of trepidation regarding this beer. As a rule, we resist the temptation to play favorites with breweries, and we certainly attempt to avoid forming a priori opinions on beers before we taste them just because we harbor some fondness for the label. Basically, we strive for impartiality in hopes of assuring that nothing but the flavor of any given brew colors our interpretations. Historians should know better. As with scholarship, so with beer; we often find neutrality an exceedingly difficult aspiration. It cannot be denied, for instance, that we both have something of a soft spot for our hometown Saranac. Blue Point, a Long Island brewery, hits the PumKing right where he lives: it is almost literally in his boyhood backyard. Compounding matters, though it falls outside the purview of this blog, Blue Point boasts one of the finest summer blueberry ales available. From the outset, then, we wanted Blue Point to succeed, and we crossed our fingers as poured the copper liquid into our goblets and drew them back for that first sip. "Please," we intoned, "don't let this be bad."

We were not disappointed. Those master craftsmen/women at Blue Point did it again! We would have settled for an adequate beer and were rewarded instead with a most excellent one. Blue Point begins with a pleasing aromatic experience and stays good to the last drop (unlike some of its competitors which somehow progress from sweet to bitter in the drinking of a single bottle). Overall this beer is remarkably crisp and balanced, catering to the strength of the pumpkin by enhancing its natural flavors-- that is, by going very light on the cinnamon and nutmeg and letting the gourd stand relatively alone-- rather than adding sweetener, pie-filling, or cloves. You taste the pumpkin, not the supplements. We rank this as one of our early favorites, so far only a little below Saranac.

Priced at $8.99 a six-pack at Wegman's, Blue Point falls into the high-middle price range of craft beers but is worth every penny. Packaged in a diminutive way, in a plain case adorned only with a simple cartoon pumpkin, Blue Point makes no gimmicky promises about "capturing the essence of the season." Instead it lets the beer the do the talking. It is as if they are saying: "You know us by now and you know what we're capable of. Trust us." Our trust, indeed, should never have wavered.

We award this beer a solid A.

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

This beer arrived on Wegman's shelves to much hype and anticipation. So much so, in fact, that the PumpKing and I traded excitable text messages--like veritable school girls-- for much of an entire evening as we schemed about setting aside a night to spend with Dogfish Head's contribution to the great pumpkin scramble. When the appointed hour arrived, we were practically giddy, despite the fact that we dropped ten bucks for a four-pack. Some background, perhaps, is in order. Earlier in the year I fell head-over-heels, puppy-dog in love with Dogfish's springtime seasonal, Aprihop, a sweet take on their classic IPA formula. Granted, their summer peach beer left a bitter taste in our collective mouths, but both the Pumpking and I harbored fond memories of enjoying Punkin ale last autumn; like the Aprihop, it blended a really good pale ale (rather than say a wheat beer base) with pumpkin flavors and interesting spicing.

Memory can be a tricky, deceptive thing. Contradictory though this will no doubt seem, Dogfish Punkin managed to be simultaneously pleasing and disappointing. The beer itself is a tasty treat, to be sure, and quite an enjoyable drink (which also packs a strong alcoholic wallop at 7.0 ABV). Indeed, both the King and I remarked to the brisk night air that if we were merely seeking a great seasonal beer-- sharply hoppy with a discernible malty, brown-sugar aftertaste-- this would satisfy. Dogfish ranks right up there with Southern Tier's delicious Harvest Ale.

Alas, we are not in the business of reviewing fall beers for their own sake. Dogfish promised (sort of-- see below) to deliver a pumpkin beer, and falls short of that promise. The beer is, above all, a pale ale; the brewer's dedication to perfecting pumpkin flavors clearly places second to that priority, and it shows. As we tasted the brew, swirling the liquid in our glasses, enjoying a fragrant bouquet, and letting the beer linger over our taste buds, we strained and strained to detect a pumpkin taste, but to no avail.

All of which makes this a difficult beer to grade. By itself, it stands as a solid A-/B+; as a pumpkin beer, it leaves something to be desired. We are going to split the difference and award it a B-.


Coda: In fairness, on its website, Dogfish Heads retreats a little from the promise of serving up a full-bore pumpkin product. According to the brewery, their aim was to create "smooth hints of pumpkin." Fair enough, but hints alone fail to impress the Royal Pumpkin Review.

Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale

We may have a winner (or, more accurately, a loser) for lousiest pumpkin beer of the year, despite the fact that it's still early in the fall-- still technically summer as of this writing--and plenty more bad beer no doubt awaits us. However, I can say with relative confidence, that we have hit the low point of our pumpkin journey. As the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons might put it: Worst. Beer. Ever. Does that sound overblown? We'd invite you to try it for yourself, but we'd rather spare you the $7.99, or at least have you spend it on Saranac or UFO Pumpkin. If you don't want to take our word for it, go ahead and buy it, but then if you didn't take our views on pumpkin beers seriously, you wouldn't be among the small handful of people reading this blog.

So, the beer itself.  The PumKing and I bought a six pack of Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale and sampled it this past week. I must admit that at first blush, in the craft beer aisle of Wegman's, we were pretty excited. Regular Blue Moon is mostly tasty and refreshing, and the Harvest Moon the brewery used to release in the autumn (which we assume is being either replaced or supplemented by this experiment to tap into the pumpkin market-- the former theory is confirmed on wikipedia) was definitely above an average malty brew. We were, in the words of the King, "delighted" to see Blue Moon try its hand at the great pumpkin game (not to be confused with the Great Pumpkin). Sadly, we found only disappointment inside that particular bottle. We each took two or three sips from our pumpkin goblets (no joke, we have them) and poured the rest of the beer down the drain before running into the waiting arms of better pumpkin suitors.  Unlike Harvest Moon, which had a bold, Oktoberfesty taste, Pumpkin Moon's flavor was repugnant. We actually recoiled as the brew hit our tongues.  It has ZERO pumpkin flavor, and only a very dull and light smattering of unidentifiable seasonings. In the end, we likened this beer to a very amateur, earthy, Nut Brown, which is not a knock on that variety, but is not what one wants when one seeks out the Pumpkin.

Grade: F   



 

Saranac Pumpkin Ale

The gold standard of pumpkin beers so far in this young autumn. Saranac has long been held near and dear to our hearts for being the closest thing to our hometown pumpkin beer. Brewed right down the thruway in Utica, New York, and available by the six pack, twelve pack, case, or as part of Saranac's fall seasonal sampler, this is a truly exceptional pumpkin beer for a reasonable price ($6.99 for 6, $11.99 for 12-- at Wegman's). But, truth to tell, in past years regional loyalty kept us coming back to Saranac more than the quality of the taste. We bought in bulk, in large part, to support an Upstate New York  neighbor. In 2010 and 2009 Saranac pumpkin was middle of the road, not too sweet, not too dark, but not too flavorful, either; the pumpkin was there, along with a light patina of spice, but the more you drank down the bottle the less you could taste either. It wasn't a bad beer (it didn't grate, for example, like Wolaver's), just a mildly pedestrian one.


No longer. Saranac has stepped up their pumpkin game, and we applaud them. The 2011 recipe ushers in a new, more robust era. Welcome to flavor country. The pumpkin taste is stronger than ever (not obnoxiously so, as if they simply dumped loads of canned pumpkin into the vats, but carefully measured to produce a perfect amount of our favorite gourd), complimented with a good mixture of spices. Indeed, the best thing about this beer may be it's spicing. It boasts a subtle, and curious, blend of sweetness and bitterness, mixed to perfection that simultaneously allows the brew to play to both of the usual crowds of pumpkin beer consumers: sweet-toothy I-want-pumpkin-pie-types and their malty give-me-the-natural-pumpkin-or-give-me-death counterparts. The name of the Saranac pumpkin game remains balance, though at much higher level than past batches. This is the Goldilocks of pumpkin beers, then. Not too dark, not too light, but just right for all comers. 

We give it a solid A.

Wolaver's Pumpkin Ale

A disappointing start to the season. Wolaver's Pumpkin, a Vermont organic beer, now packaged with a much prettier label than the bottle shown here-- think Grant Wood meets your average WPA muralist-- is about as pricey as it gets for Pumpkin craft beer. I paid almost ten bucks for a six pack at Wegman's yesterday. Now, while it gets credit for being one of the very first Pumpkin beers on the shelf, and for further outshining its (so far) weak competition of early arrivals, namely Post Road (a post for which shall follow), these virtues alone cannot save Wolaver's. Sadly, the beer is hardly worthy of the pumpkin name. The Pumpking and I split a six pack, and struggled mightily with the task; in truth, we were ready to quit on it after the first few sips, but that is not in our nature. 

There is hardly any pumpkin taste at all; one has to strain and use the imagination to even begin to detect the desired flavor, and who wants to do that much work? The brew is bitter and malty-- not in themselves necessarily bad traits for a pumpkin ale, which can be wonderful if done in this fashion with the right admixture of spices (one wouldn't want all of one's pumpkin beer to taste like pie filling; the best pumpkin beers walk a fine, balanced, line between sweet and bitter... but I digress)-- but not in a good, hoppy, pale ale way. More like a dark brown ale that's had cloves liberally applied to it. Organic beer, huh? I don't really want to taste the earth the pumpkins grew in, and that's what this most closely approximates.

I am generally considered an easy grader, so what follows is meaningful. I give Wolaver's a C-, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they were attempting the same beer journey as us.    

The First Blog: An Introduction

Most people who start blogs have some sort of noble purpose in mind: to share their scholarly reflections, to enter the political dialogue of our country in an attempt to contribute to the debates surrounding democracy (or oligarchy, or whatever we have-- neither here nor there as far as this venture is concerned), to share stories of how they are healing sick or injured animals back to good health. Well, I've tried my hand in the first two of these areas before, and my resolve never stuck. Perhaps my heart wasn't truly in it. Perhaps I didn't love history or political thought sufficiently enough to pry the ideas from my lazy, resistant mind. Maybe I'm just not clever enough. Or maybe those old blog subjects were a little close to home, a little too much like the "intellectual work" that already consumes the life of a graduate student, er, Duke... yes, a Pumpkin Duke. And of course, as Max Weber famously put it, "Politics [and history] means slow, strong drilling through hard boards, with a combination of passion and a sense of judgment." I'm more of a sense of whimsy kind of guy. So, thought I, why not turn to something more frivolous, if only slightly. 

Try, try again. Welcome to my latest effort to slough off the doldrums and join the 21st century. On this page you will find (I hope) the delightful musings, thoughtful criticisms, incessant mutterings, and self-indulgent ramblings of two pumpkin beer connoisseurs. The PumKing and I love pumpkin beer absolutely.  The spice, the crispness, the hints of brown sugar, nutmeg, or cinnamon (depending on the brand), along with the crunch of fallen leaves on the walk to the bar, the smell of autumn air, and the palpable feel of Halloween that accompany drinking these beers combine to make them a magical part of autumn.   Every year, as fall creeps closer, we nearly bankrupt ourselves on the stuff. We begin buying in mid-August, when the first label usually appears, and keep doing so until the last of it runs out in wintertime. In no small part, of course, the joy of drinking pumpkin beer lies in the social enterprise of the experience. It would be far less fun to drink them alone, and so we drink them together as often as we can, waxing as eloquently as possible about the virtues of the pumpkin. This is where you-- the reader-- come in. We invite you to listen in as we discuss a subject about which we know only as much as our lay tastes impart in the moment of imbibing, but about which we expound upon with as much eloquence and elan as we can muster. We try to use words like "elan" as much as possible as a form of puffery.  

To wit, we'll try to bring that same to style to bear on this blog. We'll be sampling as many pumpkin beers this season as possible, a staggering task that will surely cause us to stagger home often, if all goes well. The number of pumpkin beers available on the market has grown incredibly in the last few years, commensurate with the rising popularity (and dare I say, respectability) of the brew. We shall try as many as we can, and, as we do, we'll evaluate them all on a completely unscientific scale that is remarkable for having no discernible metric or consistent internal logic whatsoever.  So, sit back and prepare for the journey. Stayed tuned for my next posting, "A Word on Our Names," to be followed by our first reviews, which we'll get around to whenever we feel like it.