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.