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.