Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale

Greetings! With the mounting variety of pumpkin beers at the market, the noble PumDuke and PumKing have requested the assistance of I, the PumDuchess, to write reviews.  Though my years with the fine ales made from this mercurial gourd are not as great in number, one cannot live in the ducal household without gaining knowledge of these tasty brews. They have bestowed the honor and responsibility of writing on Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale. What follows is the humble opinion of this Duchess.

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin can be purchased at the local purveyor for $7.95 (plus taxes and deposits). At 5.7% ABV, the beer label describes itself as “a pumpkin Ale crafted with autumn’s bounty of vine-ripened pumpkin and flavors of cloves, all spice, and nutmeg, then brewed with a touch of wheat for a smooth lightly spiced finish.” As I poured the beer into the splendid pumpkin tasting chalice, I noted its good rusty orange color, but that was where my good impression ended. Upon first sip, there was not a strong pumpkin flavor (which is favored by the PumCourt in their pumpkin brews). The Harvest Pumpkin Ale had a malty but bitter spice to it rather than the zip expected from the autumn zest portrayed on the label. The sweetness seemed to come from a syrupy caramel tone rather than pumpkin essence. I also disagree with the label that the wheat used in the brewing process makes for a smooth finish. The beer finished bitter, and this did not wane throughout drinking the entire bottle. The beer left my desire for Pumpkin unsatisfied. 

Overall, I would give Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale a C-. It is a disappointing a pumpkin beer that has been on the market since 1995 (according to the Blue Moon website)—though under several names—has not been able to contend with the craftsmanship of Saranac , potential rookie of the year Long Trail Pumpkin Ale, or some of the other favorite pumpkin beers out there. If you would like, as Blue Moon Pumpkin Harvest Ale claims on the bottle, “the perfect complement to fall’s crisp, clear days,” I would recommend you spend your $8 on a different pumpkin brew or good harvest ale rather than this weak response to a promise of vine-ripened pumpkin.

Long Trail Pumpkin Ale

I'll admit it: I've never been a big fan of the Long Trail Brewery, and I've visited the place. The facility, located in beautiful central Vermont, is attractive enough-- requiring a windy drive through mountainous country roads and a constellation of homespun Rockwellian small towns-- which is good because the product would not have been worth the trip otherwise. Like the meal served to me in the Long Trail Brewery Pub, a bland porridge of a cheddar ale soup and undercooked chicken wings, all the beers I've ever sampled from this company have been underwhelming. Perhaps that's because they try to do too much: they regularly pump out 18 different types of beer, from such constants as their Blackberry Wheat (my favorite of theirs, because it's decent rather than merely inoffensive), seasonals like the Pollenator (as portended by the name, it's like drinking weak honeysuckle water), and premium bombers like their Imperial Porter and Coffee Stout (meh). What I'm getting at here is my suspicion that, like so many others (Rochester's Custom Brewcrafters comes to mind), in their efforts to saturate the microbrew market with variety, Long Trail has sacrificed attempting to brew a few good beers in favor of pumping out a surfeit of mediocre ones. 

This was the baggage I brought with me when I saw a six pack of Long Trail Pumpkin Ale on the shelf at Wegman's last week. Here we go again, thought I, snarkily, as I nonetheless put the beer in my cart, preparing to absorb the $7.99 in the name of science and the name of this blog.

I could not have been more surprised. This is an excellent little Pumpkin beer, an unpretentious (as suggested by the blatant Papa-Bear-esque ripoff adorning the label-- think Berenstain not Bill O'Reilly), unassuming, pleasant drink. Kudos to you, Long Trail, you've given my assumptions a good shake up. Don't get me wrong, this beer isn't going to win any top-ten competitions; Saranac Pumpkin is also back in town (review forthcoming) and has picked it's game up to an even higher level than last year's standard of excellence. But, and this is important, the 2012 model is Long Trail's first attempt at pumpkin beer after years of going nowhere with an Octoberfest Fall seasonal. Brewing pumpkin beer is difficult for veteran brewers-- see the inglorious descent of Southern Tier's Pumpking as exhibit A on that score-- let alone newbies. Long Trail Pumpkin is doubly impressive for being good, if not exactly great, on its inaugural run.

A few words on the beer itself. Balance is the name of its game-- not too sweet, not overly spiced, but lightly flavored to enhance the natural taste of pumpkin. The coloring of the beer is on the light side, faintly orange shading toward dark yellow, with a pleasant aroma on the pour. After some initial bitterness upon the first taste, Long Trail Pumpkin opens up with hints of sweetness; not overpowering, not sugary, but semi-sweet-- definitely not for strict pumpkin pie beer seekers, nor for those who exclusively favor a heavy hand with nutmeg and spice. The more one drinks, at least at first, the more one appreciates the Goldilocks virtue of the beer. Just right, with a little something to please everyone, a nod to the sweet and spice camps. That's what, in our opinion, great pumpkin beers do. Saranac and Blue Point, last year's favorites, both thrived by hitting an absolutely perfect balance of sweetness and spice, pumpkin pie filling and clove, vanilla and nutmeg.

Long Trail doesn't quite work on all these levels.  It leaves something to be desired, falls short of the mastery of Saranac and Blue Point; where those beers explode with flavor throughout, tantalizing the senses and leaving one wanting more after the last drop, one Long Trail Pumpkin Ale is enough for this drinker. The beer is a little heavy and flattens out noticeably during consumption, almost as if it flowers too quickly after the first sip, peaks during the second, third, and fourth, and then begins its precipitous decline at the half-way point of the pint. By the end, it's dropped even below pedestrian beer. That's a shame, because sips 2-4 were almost a trip to the Great Pumpkin's moonlit patch on gossamer wings.

Welcome to the world of pumpkin beer, Long Trail. Very nice debut, solid if not spectacular, in a field where solid isn't easy. Grade: B+

Our Royal Return

"The Pumpkin is a mercurial gourd."

-- Words spoken between the PumKing and PumDuke last week when orchestrating the return of the blog.

Don't let the calender fool you, it's that time of the year again. That special period between mid-August and Mid-October when a growing proportion of the nation's breweries pump out vats of our favorite, delicious, frothy golden-orange-brown-amber liquid. Yes, the pumpkin beer season has returned to Rochester, New York. And with it, the Royal Pumpkin Review announces its glorious return for the 2012 season.

As more and more pumpkin brands flood the market, we'll be analyzing some new brews. Too, precisely because that glorious gourd is so mercurial, the key to perfectly tapping its rich flavors so elusive, we'll be revisiting old friends and foes alike. The precariousness of brewing a good pumpkin beer-- varying annually, batch-to-batch, based on the quality of pumpkin harvests, level of spicing and sweetening, and divergent operational philosophies (to attempt pumpkin pie beer or pumpkin beer, that is the question)-- necessitates forgetting nearly everything we said about the 2011 lineup.

A welcome sight at the end of summer.

Will Saranac and Blue Point maintain their dominance? Will Wolaver's and Blue Moon continue to disappoint? Stay tuned and find out.