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Posts Tagged ‘pumpkin ale’

Blue Moon Harvest Moon

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on October 26, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Regular Blue Moon is awesome, one of those beers that is compulsively drinkable during the Summer months, nice and cold and with an orange squeezed in. I’d never tried any of the seasonal moons, so we’re dealing with a first for me.

Basic Info:
Name: Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale
Origin: Coors Brewing (Blue Moon division)
Style: Pumpkin Ale
ABV: 5.7%
IBU: not listed
I drank this: poured from a bottle at Old Chicago, Overland Park

This beer is pretty. It’s a soft pumpkin-y orange color. I didn’t get much of a scent off of it.

“Pretty” is about where my admiration stops. This wasn’t the worst pumpkin I’ve ever had, but it’s emphatically not a favorite, especially when there are some really good ones running around. It tastes like someone dumped some pumpkin into an Oktoberfest mixed with a bit of Blue Moon.

To elaborate, here’s what happens during a sip: it starts off with some pumpkin pie spices right at the beginning of the sip, which is pleasant. Then there’s a distinct hit of raw pumpkin – it tastes like the way cutting into a pumpkin smells, rather than the way pumpkin tastes when it’s been roasted or something. This is followed by some kind of sharp, funky, off taste, like they chose a wonky malt at random and threw it in the mash.

The aftertaste is slightly sour and slightly pumpkin spicy and overall not hideous, but not something I’m clamoring to experience again any time soon.

Overall rating: meh. I find myself wishing I had had a camera with me last Friday while we were drinking it, because my brother’s look of bemused dismay sums it up. I mean, it’s a pumpkin ale. It would have been fine but for Schlafly and O’Fallon, who have made fabulous pumpkins this year. And I still have the Hoppin’ Frog Double Pumpkin to grab, and a bottle of Southern Tier Pumking in the basement waiting for Halloween.

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O'Fallon Pumpkin Ale

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , on October 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I like making fun of Missouri. Growing up in Kansas, it was a pastime, like watching KU Basketball and forgetting that KU has a football team. Missouri, however, has decided to show me up by becoming the home of two very, very good pumpkin ales this year. First the Schlafly from St. Louis, and now the O’Fallon from, appropriately, O’Fallon.

Basic Info:
Name: Pumpkin Ale
Origin: O’Fallon Brewery, O’Fallon, MO
Style: Pumpkin Ale
ABV: 5.6%
IBU: 11
I drank this: from a bottle at Old Chicago, Olathe, KS

This beer is a warm, soft, orange/amber color: it really is the color of an actual pumpkin. I thought that this might bode well, and I was right. I can’t comment on the smell, however, as it came out so cold that it emitted absolutely no scent whatsoever. So I let it warm up for a few minutes before I started in on the tasting.

Flavor-wise, this is one of the strongest pumpkin flavors I’ve found in a pumpkin ale. In the Schlafly, it was very clearly pumpkin pie; in the O’Fallon, it’s slightly less sweet and pie-ish but still very strongly pumpkin. There are spices, too: at first sip, there’s a very strong hit of nutmeg, cinnamon and clove, followed by the pumpkin. I think this doesn’t make me think “pumpkin pie” specifically because the spices don’t blend with the pumpkin perfectly – I get the spices as an initial hit, and then the pumpkin flavor. I don’t have a problem with this, because it helps the beer be a hint less sweet than some other pumpkin ales, and helps put the emphasis on the pumpkin itself.

Finally, there’s an aftertaste of pale malts and wheat bread, which made no sense at all. The pumpkin and the lovely, lovely spices all went poof! on swallow, leaving me with bread and malts and eventually a very sour flavor that I wasn’t a fan of. So I had another mozzarella stick and ignored it.

To sum up: aftertaste aside, this is a very good pumpkin ale. I’d go for the Schlafly first, no question, but this is a good sub if you can find it and the Schlafly is unavailable. This is also a better pumpkin ale for food: the Schlafly is so concentrated that it stands by itself and would make an excellent dessert beer, whereas the O’Fallon is a bit more relaxed about things and won’t try to get in your way if you force it to share taste buds with your meal.

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Schlafly Special Release Pumpkin Ale

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , on September 28, 2010 | 3 Comments »

Before we get into the beer here, I’d like to make a quick PSA: GET TO KNOW YOUR SERVER. Or your server’s manager/beer ordering person, if possible. (Tip them well, too – they’re bringing you your drinks!)

The reason? As much as I love Old Chicago, I get frustrated sometimes that the beer doesn’t rotate all that often, so that it feels like the selection is fairly stagnant. Here’s the thing, though: it isn’t. Apparently. It’s just that the really good fun stuff is often not mentioned (um, anywhere), so you’ve got to get to know your server/manager/etc. in order to figure out what they’ve got that isn’t being advertised.

Case in point is this effing fantastic Schlafly Pumpkin, whose existence I was sadly unaware of until Mom and I had been talking beer with a manager (Brian, who was awesome) for a solid 15 minutes on a quiet Sunday afternoon. So folks, they have this beer at Old Chicago at 119th and Metcalf. If you do nothing else this week, GO HAVE SOME. It’ll come in a 10 oz pour because this stuff, baby, it’s strong.

Basic Info:
Name: Special Release Pumpkin Ale
Origin: St. Louis Brewery/Schlafly Tap Room
Style: Pumpkin Ale
ABV: 8.00%
IBU: 16
I drank this: on tap at Old Chicago, Overland Park, KS

I have a love/hate relationship with pumpkin ales. When they’re good, they’re really awesome. When they’re bad, they’re heartbreaking because I was hoping for something good. The bad ones tend not to have any real discernible pumpkin flavor and tend to leave a sort of funky quasi-clove-y aftertaste.

This is one of the good ones. The very, very good ones. This beer is a medium amber color with absolutely zero head. It smells like pumpkin pie – all the warm and nommy fall spices with a very strong underlying pumpkin base. I couldn’t even smell the malts they used – this is all pumpkin pie.

It’s lightly carbonated, initially sharp on the tongue but also creamy – it has a nice clove/allspice/nutmeg/cinnamon spice blend and a strong pumpkin flavor. You know, like pumpkin pie. It’s a sweet beer, but not sugary/sticky sweet. There’s something slightly dry about it in the back, not quite hoppy, but enough to keep me from feeling like I’ve just downed a bunch of sugar.

The end of my notes on this sum up the experience nicely: this stuff is stupid awesome. Just drink it – you won’t be disappointed.

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