2010 PUMPKIN BEER ROUNDUP

In case you're wondering, pumpkin beer is legit.  Fruit-flavored beers don't have the best reputation, and usually for good reason.  They're often just generic ales with syrup added after the brewing process, instead of fermenting the fruit itself — frankly, some of them could pass as soda.  With the exception of lambics (a great style that bucks this trend), beer was rarely made with fruit until recently.  Yet pumpkin ale has been around for hundreds of years.  In Colonial times, American brewers couldn't afford to ship expensive ingredients overseas from England, so they used what they had around.  And what did they have?  Well, aside from apples (hard cider is perhaps the most patriotic of all beverages) they had pumpkins, the greatest of all vegetables (they are vegetables, right?)  Pumpkins, it so happens, work really well in beer, blending well with the natural bitterness of hops, and adding a unique flavor that doesn't overpower the beer or end up tasting like chemicals.  And thus the two greatest things in the world were paired, creating one of the most potentially delicious substances of all time.

GREAT:
Pumking - Southern Tier (NY)
The Great Pumpkin - Elysian  (WA)
Despite all my enthusiasm for pumpkin beer as a style, I don't think it's been perfected by most modern brewers.  Only since the mid-2000's has the style become popular, and though just about every micro has a pumpkin beer of their own now, many of them just aren't that great, or original.  Southern Tier and Elysian provide the exceptions: two wildly unique pumpkin beers with no rivals.  Despite the large number of beers on this list, no others come remotely close to these two, either in taste, style or sheer perfection.  And yet, each is completely different from the other, proving that there's more than one perfect pumpkin beer recipe — the sign of a truly worthwhile style.  I hope to see more beers compete with these two in years to come, but for now, they are without question among the best beers in the world, of any style.

GOOD:
Imperial Pumpkin Ale - Weyerbacher (PA)
Smashed Pumpkin - Shipyard (ME)
Night Owl Pumpkin - Elysian (WA)
Fisherman's Pumpkin Stout - Cape Ann Brewing Company (MA)
Punkin' Ale - Dogfish Head (DE)
A few steps down from "Great", these are still solid beers — better than many of other styles, and certainly better than most other pumpkins.  They all earn extra points for uniqueness.  Weyerbacher's entry is like a sweet brown(sugar) ale, smooth and rich with spices, simply tastier than most.  Shipyard's special, rare pumpkin (they have another, inferior entry on the list) is lighter in mouthfeel but also high in ABV, and has an interesting, earthy vegetable profile, like a chunk of raw pumpkin, somewhat similar to Night Owl, the second Elysian beer here (and nowhere near as good as their first, The Great Pumpkin). Cape Ann makes the only pumpkin stout that I've ever seen, and as you might guess, the stout taste overwhelms the pumpkin, but nonetheless makes for a very smooth, tasty beer, similar to a milk stout with a more complex profile. Dogfish Head, generally one the best breweries in America, came up with one of the first pumpkin beers in the microbrew movement.  Possibly as a result, their try is surprisingly tame for a Dogfish and not strong in pumpkin flavor — basically a brown ale with some funky caramelized flavoring.  It's nonetheless a delicious and unique beer.

AVERAGE:
Pumpkin Ale - Blue Point (NY)
Pumpkin Brewster - Sixpoint (NY)
Leaf Pile Ale - Greenport Harbor (NY)
Saranac Pumpkin Ale - The Matt Brewing Company (NY)
Pumpkin Ale - Captain Lawrence (NY)
Will Stevens' Pumpkin Ale - Wolaver's / Otter Creek (VT) 
Pumpkin Cider - Woodchuck Hard Cider (VT) 


With any style, an "average" is going to be established eventually, a standard for the style that most breweries will tend to work around.  It's already happened with pumpkin beer — a good sign for its establishment as a mainstream style, I suppose, but rather disappointing when you're trying to find something interesting to drink.  I have to assume a bit of it is laziness, as all the better pumpkin beers are rarer and pricier, whereas these beers are more easily found, often populating grocery store sixpack aisles.  The taste of this "average" is generally not strong in pumpkin flavor, and at this level, many breweries barely use any actual pumpkin in the making of their beer, resorting instead to cheap "fall" spices that give a vaguely pumpkin pie-like flavor. Blue Point and Sixpoint have new entries for 2010, and rise a bit above the rest; certainly, they're worthwhile beers to have on any occasion, even if they aren't particularly unique.  Saranac Pumpkin is a personal favorite of mine for its strong vanilla aftertaste, but once again, the pumpkin flavor is not very prominent. Woodchuck's is of course a cider, not a beer, but still deserving of placement on the list.  The pumpkin flavor is barely noticeable, adding more to the smooth, crisp mouthfeel than anything else, but it's an excellent fall drink.

SUB-PAR:
Pumpkin Barrel Ale - Fire Island (NY)
Pumpkinhead Ale - Shipyard (ME)
Pumpkin Ale - Buffalo Bill's  (CA)
Pumpkin Ale - Smuttynose (NH)
Post Road Pumpkin Ale - Brooklyn Brewery (NY)
Smiling Pumpkin - Heartland Brewery (NY)
Compared to the entire world of beer out there, none of these are exactly bad beers.  If you see one in a bar and don't have many other options, by all means, give it a try.  But Smuttynose and Brooklyn Brewery unfairly hog grocery store aisles with their sixpacks, crowding out many superior pumpkin beers that just didn't land widespread distribution deals — and that annoys me.  Most of these are very similar to the "standard pumpkin beer recipe" I talked about above, but with a few tweaks that bring out the more unpleasant characteristics of the beer.  If you like bitter, sharper beers (but not as a result of hops, which are barely noticeable) then this may simply be a difference of opinion.  I find the mouthfeel watery and unpleasant and the pumpkin taste almost gimmicky.  Still.  Could be worse.

AVOID:
Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale - Coors (CO)
Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale - Anheuser-Busch (MO)
"Worse."  Avoid.  Don't ask questions.  Just walk away.