The 5 best pumpkin beers you can buy (according to me, today)

It’s Thanksgiving. Time for turkey, mashed potatoes and most important, pumpkin pie.

I’ve listed numerous times my love for all things pumpkin, so what better day than today to wrap up pumpkin beer season? In simple fashion, I wanted to share with you the five best pumpkin beers I’ve enjoyed. This is certainly subject to change and is entirely biased on my own taste buds….

1. Southern Tier Pumking
As if there were any doubt. I was lucky to find this beer on tap for the first time at a great bar in Washington, D.C. this month. It’s everything I’d ever want from a pumpkin beer, offering intense pumpkin flavors, the right blend of spices and a great malt backbone to give it a crusty kick.

2. Elysian Brewing Dark O’ the Moon
If anything, this fall has proven my adoration for mixing pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices with rich, dark beers. Dark O’ the Moon uses a base of a stout to mix with pumpkin (three times) and cinnamon. Astonishingly delicious.

3. Epic Brewing/DC Brau Fermentation Without Representation
This follows close on the heels of Dark O’ the Moon because it’s another dark beer-pumpkin blend. This imperial pumpkin porter used canned pumpkin puree, which I think is unique for commercial breweries. It all mixes to a wonderful, dessert end.

4. Sam Adams Fat Jack
I don’t care for Sam Adam’s regular, old pumpkin beer, Harvest Pumpkin Ale. This one, I like. It reminded me a lot of Pumking, just a little different taste of the booze as it mixes with the pumpkin and spices. Since Pumking is such a hit and can sell out fast, this makes for an acceptable alternative.

5. Elysian Brewing Hansel and Gretel
While there’s little-to-no pumpkin flavor in this ginger-based pilsner, it’s so unique I have to include it on this list. Hansel and Gretel is very refreshing and made with a healthy dose of Saaz hops to offer a little extra spiciness. It’s a very novel brew that would definitely add another layer to your pumpkin beer collection.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, all!

Elysian Brewing Great Pumpkin ale

Since I’ve made a point to write-up thoughts on the three previous beers from Elysian Brewing‘s Pumpkin Patch beer pack, I’d be remiss if I didn’t top off my thoughts with that of The Great Pumpkin, the brewery’s imperial pumpkin ale that sits at 92 on Beer Advocate.

Describing this beer is super easy, since you could probably check out my thoughts on Night Owl – Elysian’s run of the mill pumpkin ale – and it’d be a sufficient base. What I got from Great Pumpkin is simply Night owl multiplied by two. At 8.1 percent ABV, the booze for Great Pumpkin is stronger than Night Owl’s 5.9 percent and more easily detectible. If you’re into that kind of thing, then I’d say reach for Great Pumpkin, which balances out the extra alcohol flavors with stronger pumpkin and spice characteristics than you’d find in Night Owl. Sugary sweetness is a bit more present in Great Pumpkin, which again helps to cover up some of the extra booze. Otherwise, I felt all the spice aromas and tastes were the same as Night Owl, just kicked up a notch to ward off higher ABV.

If I had a choice, I’d skip Great Pumpkin and stick to Night Owl, if only because Great Pumpkin doesn’t seem to have any other purpose than to offer a higher ABV version of Elysian’s standard pumpkin ale. Don’t get me wrong, this beer is good, but it’s too similar to their other offering to excite me that much.

… and with that, my pumpkin tour of Elysian is complete. The Dark O’ the Moon pumpkin stout was by far my favorite, an incredible marriage between chocolate malt and seasonal pumpkin flavors.

All four of the beers from Elysian’s Pumpkin Patch pack.

The Great Pumpkin Stats:

• Malt: Pale, Munich, Cara-Hell, Cara-Vienne, Cara-Munich and Crisp 45° L Crystal malts
• Hops: Bittered with Magnum
• Adjuncts: Roasted pumpkin seeds in the mash, and extra pumpkin added in the mash, kettle and fermenter. Spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice.
• ABV: 8.1 percent

Elysian Brewing Dark O’ the Moon

No need to wax poetic about my love for all things pumpkin again. I’ll simply point out that I’m now 3/4 of my way through Elysian Brewing‘s Pumpkin Patch beer pack and while I’ve loved them all, their Dark O’ the Moon pumpkin stout simply blew me away.

I’m not the only one, as this beer won a silver in the “Field Beer” category (now also includes pumpkin beer) at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival and it carries a 87 on Beer Advocate. What’s the love all about? Hit the jump.

Elysian Night Owl

As of late, it should be easy to tell my adoration toward all things pumpkin. One of the things I love most about pumpkin beers is that broadly speaking, everyone who makes a pumpkin beer is working from some amount of the same group of adjuncts – pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, cloves. However, every brewer is able to create a unique take on the pumpkin beer style by tweaking amounts or even the base style of the beer – Elysian’s Hansel and Gretel, for example.

So, as I make my way through Elysian’s “Pumpkin Patch” four-pack of brews, it’s a wonderful example how one brewery can make four very distinct versions of pumpkin beer that may appeal to a wide variety of tastes. After a rather experimental ginger-pumpkin pilsner to start off, I was in more typical pumpkin ale territory this weekend with Night Owl, a straight take on the style that currently scores 87 on Beer Advocate.

Hit the jump to see how Night Owl stacks up to some of your other favorite pumpkin brews.

Big Boss Harvest Time … it’s a pumpkin beer, so you know it’s good

Creepy levitating Harvest Time

As we roll into the end of October, with Thanksgiving around the corner, we are sadly into the waning days of the pumpkin beer. Winter and holiday styles have already started showing up in my local beer store, considering pumpkin beers were being delivered in mid-July.

As a lover of all things pumpkin, this saddens me. I’ll only have my homemade pumpkin pies to keep my belly full until I give that up sometime in mid-winter. So, for now, I’m enjoying pumpkin beers while they still last. One of my favorite fall seasonals comes from a local brewery, Big Boss. The Raleigh-based brewery puts out Harvest Time, which currently sits at 85 on Beer Advocate and was even featured this week as one of “7 Great Pumpkin Beers” on MadeMen.com.

What does this ghoulish brew have to offer? Hit the jump to find out.

Sam Adams Fat Jack

When you’re a pumpkin-loving fool like me, there’s only one pumpkin beer that really knows how to carve out a piece of your heart.

Naturally, it’s Southern Tier’s Pumking, a seasonal gift from the Beer Gods of Autumn to the soul of my stomach liver. But wouldn’t you know it, I found a secondary, if not slightly lacking alternative. It’s Sam Adams Fat Jack, a new, limited entry to heir seasonal lineup. It’s pretty awesome, but it’s only got a 82 on Beer Advocate. These people don’t know what’s good for them.

I won’t say Fat Jack is a second coming of Pumking, but it was a nice surprise that when I popped he cap on this bottle I could smell pumpkin right away. When I want a pumpkin beer I want pumpkin pie in a glass. Fat Jack did its best on this one. Find out just how well after the jump.

Epic/DC Brau Fermentation without Representation

Now this is what I’m taking about. A little beer ingenuity goes a long way, apparently.

For all the pumpkin beers I’ve had – and there have been many – I believe Fermentation without Representation is the first that has not followed the typical spiced amber/brown ale route as its base beer. Epic Brewing, in collaboration with DC Brau, used an imperial porter as the base of this beer, which instills a great  roasted malt backbone to pair with sweet pumpkin. It’s got a 85 on Beer Advocate.

When it comes to this beer, don’t let the “imperial” tag frighten you. At 8 percent ABV, the kick isn’t a lot and not really detectable until you get through all the other great flavors. It’s worth it.

Hit the jump for my lovingly remembered notes of this great beer.

Cisco Brewers Pumple Drumkin

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Fall means football, cooler weather and most important – pumpkin beer. Served, of course, with pumpkin pie.

I am incredibly passionate for anything pumpkin, which is why I typically have a pumpkin pie in my fridge most weeks between September and December. It’s just the right thing to do, in my opinion. So this is why I’m also excited about the yearly release of pumpkin beers, even if it does start in July. However, being the purist I am, I have now officially kicked off the season with my first pumpkin beer, Pumple Drumkin from Cisco Brewers, a new arrival to the Triangle from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (God save it!). It’s got a 84 on Beer Advocate.

*Sidenote: As pumpkin beers tend to be a polarizing style, I should clarify that what I want from a pumpkin beer is full-on pumpkin pie-like flavor. Use Pumking as a reference and go from there. I don’t want a spiced ale, I want an orchestra of sugary, pumpkin goodness in my liver stomach.*

Thankfully, Pumple Drumkin met me half way there.

Like most pumpkin beers, Drumkin poured orange-hued with deep pumpkin pie orange sitting on top of pocket of gold at the bottom of my glass. There was barely carbonation, but that didn’t stop the beer from bringing forth the typical aromas you’d find – lots of sweet malt and caramel with an easy pick up of nutmeg and ginger. The pumpkin smell is hiding at the back with just a touch of cinnamon. Clove is knocking at the door but just can’t quite come in.

What I found funny was that with a general lack of intense carbonation, the beer still felt very bubbly and light on my tongue. The taste comes forward with the same pumpkin spices at first and finishes with an almost roasted pumpkin flavor. Sadly for me, that flavor was more of real pumpkin or pumpkin seed than of pumpkin pie. Fine, but not what I want.

While I can’t find easy information about what hops Cisco used, I suspect that balance of pumpkin flavor comes from the hop bitterness mixing with all the other characteristics. I note this because after a few sips of the beer, a bite of the pumpkin pie knocks out most of the pumpkin flavor and really brings an almost hoppy amber ale quality to the beer. This is something I find common for most pumpkin beers, for good or bad.

… and all this also changes as the beer warms. I’ve found that the flavor I’m looking for from my pumpkin beers often takes 20-30 minutes before it’s ready to come out and play, and that was the case with Drumkin. I do think that the relative balance of all the typical pumpkin beer flavors and hops makes this a good version of the style for non-pumpkin beer fans, though.

Hit the jump for my Rate That Beer sheet.

Bruery /Elysian/Stone’s collaboration beer – La Citrueille Celeste De Citracado

Tonight I had a bottle that I randomly came across at the local beer store – Bruery /Elysian/Stone’s collaboration beer La Citrueille Celeste De Citracado. According to the bottle, it’s a pumpkin, yam, toasted fenugreek, lemon verbena, and birch bark beer. I served it – naturally – with a slice of homemade pumpkin pie. It currently has an 82 on Beer Advocate (which also apparently switched to numerical scores this weekend).

While I love pumpkin beers, or at least the idea of them, this was not something I’ll be having again. I was excited by the prospects of what I read on the label, but it fell well short.

The beer poured a nice dark brown color with maybe just a tinge of red, although that could’ve been the lighting I held it to. Oddly enough, the smell made me think of lighter coffee beers. That was probably my first warning sign. There was definitely some earthy tones to the smell, but nothing that made me think of pumpkin or yam.

The taste reminded me a lot of Brooklyn Brewery’s Post Road pumpkin ale. Which, despite a good rating on Beer Advocate, I hated. The La Citrueille Celeste De Citracado just didn’t have much there, taste-wise, which really surprised me, considering the breweries involved and the list of ingredients. There was very minimal pumpkin taste up front and a very bland, flat and uninteresting “taste” at the end. I say “taste” because there really wasn’t much of one. There wasn’t any discernible aftertaste, either.

I will not be trying this beer again, but will gladly be having more pumpkin pie.

Taking a flight: Bull City Burger and Brewery

Finally, after being open for months, I ventured into Bull City Burger and Brewery this weekend. I am happy I did. You can find a few of their beers reviewed on Beer Advocate.

Having gone through many of North Carolina’s breweries, Bull City stacks up well against others. I did a flight of the seven beers they had on tap on Nov. 26, which consisted of:

golden
pale ale
US/UK hybrid ale
Pumpkin ale
Bock
Black lager
Oatmeal stout served on nitrogen

All the beers were very good, but none absolutely blew me away. I liked the pumpkin the most because unlike other pumpkin ales, this one did a good job at finding a balance between pumpkin flavor (I was told they used 300 pounds of pumpkin, but the server didn’t know for what quantity of beer) and spices. The bar didn’t have details on what spices were used, but if you think of the options for a pumpkin pie – nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger – you’ll get a general idea. It doesn’t taste as sweet as Pumking, but it’s probably among the better pumpkin ales I’ve had. The pumpkin flavor was set off just slightly by a vanilla malty taste. I would drink this often, not just in the fall.

The rest were all good and very easy to drink. I’m generally not a fan of goldens, but Bull City’s version was good. It was light and crisp and better than any mass produced version you’ll find at any grocery store across the country. The pale ale was solid and not too hoppy … the hybrid was VERY easy to drink but didn’t have a true discernible taste that would make me want to drink a lot of it … the bock was lighter than most commercial bocks you’ll find without a heavy taste … the black lager got a very similar reaction from me as the bock … the oatmeal stout was good but I would’ve loved to have it on cask instead of nitrogen. The mouthfeel was what I expected it to be – smooth – but the flavor didn’t distinguish itself from other oatmeal stouts.

Like I said – they were all good and easy to drink. Kudos for the fact that they would probably work well with food from the menu, although I didn’t eat when I stopped by. I will certainly be a repeat customer to test that.