Schlafly Pumpkin Ale

June 4, 2015 by Steve Leave a Comment

“…as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

THE BEER

As pumpkin beers go, we have covered quite a few. The style started as a simple use of a gourd as an adjunct for flavor and sweetness. These days, pumpkin is paired with coffee, huge pumpkin pie spices, and of course bourbon barrels.

Schlafly Pumpkin Ale, a special release from the brewery, attempts to toe the line between the the overly spiced, and the original pumpkin beers that were bland and simple. A simply name, a simple label, and an unaffected approach to an autumn classic. This beer should by all rights fall by the wayside, another pumpkin ale with no gimmick. And yet it stands out, a consistently beloved pumpkin beer, considered a standard barer of the style.

TASTING NOTES

Looking at the bottle, this beer looks like so many 1990’s microbrews, orange in color with a pumpkin, but otherwise quite boring. The beer pours a ruddy orange color, with no visible sediments. Schlafly Pumpkin Ale bubbles up with a short, pallid, tan head, that fades with minimal retention. The aromas off the pour are a bouquet of cinnamon, cloves or ginger and nutmeg, with no notes of hops, and mildly sweet malt elements. The tastes are a joyful blend of pumpkin pie, an almost tang of vestigial gourd and sweet malt finish. The body is creamy with good carbonation. Almost no bitterness shows against the spice and sugars, with a dry, clean finish.

CONCLUSION

More people care for pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks, or pumpkin pie spice Pringles, more than they do for actual pumpkin. The spice mixture is a popular blend without question. Within Schlafly Pumpkin Ale that well liked blend of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg combines with a grounding of pumpkin flavor and light, dry finish. The seasoning is strong, yet not overwhelming. The beer is quite simply a delicious expression of what has become the standard pumpkin ale style. While not rare, the distribution is limited, making this a special treat for those of us outside Schlafly’s range. The 8% ABV is rather high, and yet well hidden here. This is a rewarding beer, one of the best around for anyone that likes pumpkin pie.

9.0/10

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Best Pumpkin Ale Part II

October 30, 2011 by admin 4 Comments

The Premise

Like the Bollywood addiction to re-interpreting Hollywood films like The Matrix 15 years after the fact, we are also known to return to the scene of the crime. What is the best pumpkin ale is a question we explored recently, with Southern Tier’s Pumking coming out on top. And while The Barley Whine could never drink all of the pumpkin beers brewed in the U.S. this year, there are so many great ones available we felt another round was only fair to give a better sampling of all the variety in this style. So let us get right to it: Best Pumpkin Ale Part II.

Methodology

As always, we blind tasted brews of a similar style, rated between 1 and 10, with .5 as the only allowable decimal. Beers are ranked based on style, not metaphysical eminence as libation.

Best Pumpkin Ale Tasting II — Pumpkin Ale Tasting II Lineup

The Beers

Rivertown Pumpkin and Cigar City Good Gourd — Tasting II Winners

Cigar City – Good Gourd: #1 (tie). Brassy in color with a mild savory/sour nose. Sweet roasted malty notes battle a subtle boozyness (8.5& ABV) as the front palate is hit with a gourdiness, modest spice, and just enough hops to balance the sweet. Tied for our favorite brew. Unfortunately not distributed in our locale.
Rivertown – Pumpkin Ale: #1 (tie). Translucent brown with a soapy, spicy aroma. Minimal spice in flavor with subtle nutmeg, but huge pumpkin fruit taste. Not too sweet, with some maple.
St. Ambroise – The Great Pumpkin Ale: #3 . Light brown, smelling strongly of pumpkin pie spices. Taste is classic pumpkin ale with more p.p. spice and a lot of sweetness. Dry finish did not appeal to everyone.
Thirsty Dog – Pumpkin Ale: #4. Another light brown brew with solid spice scent. A bit thin as a brown ale, with nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and pumpkin. Like St. Ambroise this plays right to form and does it well.
Jolly Pumpkin – La Parcela: #5. A curve ball. Funk/sour on the nose, big time. Cloudy gold, this beer, in the middle of all the pie inspired samples, tastes super sour. Some gourd, spice, and possibly oak creeps in, but this is a lot of sour. Everyone liked this, but not everyone got the ‘pumpkin ale’ nature.
Buckeye Brewing – Pumpkin Dead: #6 (tie). Translucent brown, with weak carbonation. Pumpkin is there and spice is present but barely. Overall some hops in the finish but nothing to write home about.
Tommyknocker – Small Patch Pumpkin Harvest Ale: #6 (tie). Dark brown, almost opaque, the darkest by far of the nine sampled. With a roasted malt and spiciness in the nose, this beer brings only a slight p.p. spice profile along with a roasted malt backbone. Not much pumpkin or anything else.
Shipyard – Smashed pumpkin: #8. Sweet nose, smelling of mothballs. Its like a pumpkin pie that has been sitting in grandma’s dresser. The p.p. spice and pumpkin fruit are there, but booze and more mothballs dominate. Good carbonation and a clean finish.
Buckeye Brewing – Pawpaw: #9. “The North American native pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a temperate tree fruit in the mostly tropical custard apple family, Annonaceae.” according to Kentucky State University. It is the largest fruit native to North America, and has a tropical fruit flavor. The beer was a translucent amber, smelling of Juicyfruit and caramel. Taste was of mild sweetness, but with no pumpkin or p.p. spice. None of the tasters had a history with the pawpaw fruit to know if the flavors were legit.

Conclusion

Round two brought us more diverse, delicious beers. The Rivertown Pumpkin brought more pumpkin flavor than anything previously tasted, and the Cigar City Good Gourd was a complex, modestly sweet delight. In our area neither of these beers are easily available, although the Rivertown more so than the Tampa based CC. The Canadian St. Ambroise was a very nice brew you may find at your local store. In the Cleveland area, Thirsty Dog has bottled a complex treat that delivers at a higher level than more famous, nationally distributed competitors. While Southern Tier’s Pumking may be the most universally palatable of all pumpkin beers, this tasting revealed four more autumnal ales worth hunting down for pumpkin lovers. If you can find any of the top four, they will not disappoint.

What is the Best Pumpkin Ale?

October 8, 2011 by admin 3 Comments

Pumpkin Beer Tasting 2011 Part 1

About the beer

Pumpkin ales are a species fruit beer brewed to taste of that familiar American spice mix associated with pumpkin pie and mulled rum. Fall is the season for these foods as well as harvest time for pumpkins. Although many pumpkin ales contain canned fruit as they are brewed well in advance of the pumpkin harvest.

For our first pumpkin tasting of the year, we selected a wide variety of interpretations of the style. From the traditional Ichabod Pumpkin Ale by New Holland and Punkin’ from Dogfish Head, to the bitter end, Smuttynose’s offering. On the strong side we selected Heavy Seas Great Pumpkin bourbon barrel aged Imperial Pumpkin Ale at 10.5% ABV, a West Coast interpretation, the Autumn Maple at 10% ABV, yam based brew with pumpkin spices, molasses, vanilla and Belgian yeast from The Bruery, and from Hoppin Frog, Frog’s Hollow Double Pumpkin Ale at 8.4% ABV. Also included was a favorite from New York, the Southern Tier Pumking, another imperial at 8.6% ABV.

What is the best pumpkin ale? — A few of the contenders

Methodology

For the first round of pumpkin beer tasting we sampled seven beers blindly, no more than two at a time.

So what is the best pumpkin ale?

Southern Tier – Pumking: Splendid from first wiff to the sweet sorrow of the last sip. Pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Caramel corn with cinnamon and vanilla rainbows. This beer was in limited supply in 2010 but seems to be more available this year. Buy it now!
Dogfish Head – Punkin’: A traditional favorite of The Barley Whine, this time our samples lacked a lot of the pumpkin and spice that we remember. A solid showing but a bit dull compared to what else is out there.
Smuttynose – Pumpkin Ale: Smutty brings an assertive hop presence to everything they do, and this is no exception. For people who dislike the sweetness of fruit based beers but like pumpkin spices, this is a good alternative. Good pumpkin presence.
Hoppin Frog – Frog’s Hollow Double Pumpkin Ale: A mix of pumpkin spices, molasses and ginger. Not much gourd flavor, and a bit flat in the finish, but not a bad brew. The ginger is a unique touch and reminds us of their winter offering.
The Bruery – Autumn Maple: Dark in color, the strong maple flavors are up front on the palette. A lot of sweetness, with some of that funk that people love or hate in certain Belgian yeast strains. Super complex brew made from yams. Well worth trying if your glucose levels are in check. Steve loved it. Dave was ‘meh’.
Heavy Seas – The Greater Pumpkin: Big cinnamon/nutmeg nose. Very sweet, which helps cover up some of the 10+% ABV. Lots of vanilla/oak flavors coming from the bourbon barrels this guy was aged in. One of our favorites. If you see this one, pick it up.
New Holland – Ichabod Ale: Classic pumpkin pie smell (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg) and solid malty sweetness. More spice than fruit but finishes cleanly and has great balance. This one was a real surprise and compromised what most people expect from a good pumpkin ale.

Conclusions

What is the best pumkin ale? Pumking! — Pumking: More popular than the wine at a recent wedding

Pumpkin beers are generally brown ales with pumpkin spices added along with some pumpkin, but a “typical” pumpkin beer is becoming harder to define. The style has a lot of diversity in the craft brewing world, and each of the beers we sampled were interesting and enjoyable on their own.

As far as the best pumpkin beer however, so far nothing for us has topped Southern Tier’s Pumking. It tastes like pumpkin and so much more. The high alcohol is well covered in the creamy nutmeg, clove, cinnamon medley. The sweetness is subtle, not cloying. Among this tough competition, Southern Tier comes out on top.

Update: Part II here