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.