The Great Pumpkin Beer Taste-off

I think part of the fun of beers is comparing them. A big reason that I started this blog was to start writing down my impressions, thoughts, and feelings on beer so I could recall them, and compare various beers.

With that in mind, my friends and I decided to go a pumpkin beer tasting. I'm not a huge pumpkin beer fan, but there are so many out right now, it seemed silly to do otherwise.

Now, I should preface this by saying that my favorite pumpkin beer was tried well before the tasting. I managed to get my hands on a bottle of Heavy Seas Great'er Pumpkin - their normal pumpkin beer that is aged in bourbon barrels. It was delicious. The bourbony vanilla really complemented the pumpkin spice flavor of the beer. However, this beer is fairly rare, so we weren't able to get another bottle of the tasting, despite Rouge driving damn near an hour to try and find some.

Of the beers we tried, I didn't really have a least favorite. The Heavy Seas was a little too boozy for my taste, but in it's defense, we didn't let it cool long enough. The flavor was all ginger and alcohol, with none of the lovely lightness of it's greater cousin.

Sam Adams was a tasty, light, and sweet beer - it tasted the "beeriest" of all the beers, but in doing so it lacked any serious pumpkin flavor. I like Sam Adams, but I realize now that a lot of their beers are kind of the entry level version of the microbrews. They make good beer, but it's not terribly adventurous - they're a middle ground between macro and micro, between Bud and Dogfish.

Speaking of Dogfish, their Punkin Ale had a very strong pumpkin spice flavor, which was tasty, but the beer itself lacked body. It was fairly thin, which didn't give the beer the sort of hearty backbone that a great pumpkin beer seems to need in my opinion. Still, fairly tasty.

Saranac, surprisingly, came out with one of the favorites of the evening. I thought that the flavor was a little herbaceous, but the flavor was indisputably pumpkin-ish, and although it wasn't terribly complex, it did the job of being a pumpkin beer.

My favorite of the evening, and a popular choice, was Southern Tier's Pumking. A full body, flavors of ginger and nutmeg and cinnamon, and an interestingly sweet finish made this beer taste like spice cake to some, pumpkin pie to others. Either way, a very, very solid beer, and winner of the evening. Highly recommended that you give this beer a shot, even if you're not a huge pumpkin beer fan.

An aside, and more beer!

So, I promise I'll stick to my format, but a brief side note.

Turkey is a surprisingly easy to use meat. A little healthier than beer (who cares?), and more importantly a little cheaper. It's also a pretty bland meat by itself, so it absorbs other flavors well. It's less fatty, so you'll need to use a little oil or other fat-type-thing to make it adhere while cooking, but it's well worth it. I recently made turkey meatballs and a turkey burger, and they were delicious :-D

Also, sauteing garlic. Tougher than it seems. It needs a much higher temperature, but also burns unfortunately easily. I'm working on ways to make it work, but I'm 0 for 1 on the "throw it and butter into a pan at the same time" idea.

But what do these things have to do with burgers and beer you ask? Nothing! But this is my blog, so suck it. I will occasionally tangent off about whatever cooking thing I'm trying. Feel free to skip it if you are terribly offended.

Back to the point, more catching up!

The first beer I'm recounting was the Three Philosophers beer. I had been aching to try this since I heard about it. I studied a lot of philosophy in college (hahahahah oh god why?), and thought the name was just too funny. Little did I know what I was in store for.
The brewer of this beer, Ommegang, is a New York brewer that makes Belgian style beers. For those who don’t know, they tend to be a bit fruity, a bit spicy, and somewhat strange.
Three philosophers was all of that, in delicious form. The spices were palatable without being overwhelming, and worked well with the fruits to create a very interesting and entirely unique taste. I do not have a complex enough knowledge of beer to appreciate all the flavors, but I can tell you this much: this beer is way smarter than you. The best you can do is acknowledge that, and enjoy it anyway.

Also; a second, and sadly worse beer. This account will discuss a most unusual beer, which has greatly vexed me. I was out at a local bar, and saw that they had a Crème Brule stout. It sounded delicious, and I decided that I needed some. The first sip was fantastic. It smelled like the delicious desert, and I enjoyed it. It was the first beer I tried by Southern Tier, and I was suitably impressed.
But then, alas, it turned on me. The sweet smell became almost cloying, and made the beer taste more and more bitter. Combined with the potent alcohol content (something close to 9%), I was eventually struggling to choke down the bitter, alcoholic beer, all its former glory gone.
It may be my taste buds are just not mature enough yet, but this beer was altogether pretty bad. It started great, but the smell was in too sharp of a contrast to the flavor of the beer itself. A sad, sad day for stout lovers.