Me and pumpkins go way back. I mastered gluttony early on in life and dabbled in songwriting for a while when I was 7 years old. My mom still has one of my lyrical gems tucked away in a drawer somewhere--go ahead, ask her... she'll show you. Though it's a song about my dad, one of the masterful lyrics I had written was "why, oh why, do I eat pumpkin pie?" (That's clearly the kind of socially relevant song writing that solidified the legacy of the likes of Bob Dylan several decades prior.)
As I grew older and became a corporate cog in the produce wheel of Lowes Foods, I also spent a great deal of time stealing pumpkin pies from the deli (seasonally, of course) and polishing them off behind the swinging doors of the employees-only produce storage room. Why all the pumpkin history? To let you know that I haven't merely jumped on the pumpkin bandwagon in my later years. No, Friends, I started young on this journey, and now I'm simply a grown man in search of my next pumpkin high.
Coincidentally, the obligatory seasonal adult beverage these days seems to be the pumpkin ale. There are no fewer than ten available to me locally, and they're pushing the "Oktoberfest" brews further back on the shelf each fall. First, let's understand that anything infused with pumpkin probably shouldn't be appealing. It is technically a squash, after all, and I doubt that anyone is waiting for the leaves to turn so they can make a bee line to the store for a microbrew with a light gourd finish. I'll spare the technicalities here and assume that we can all agree that the appeal of a pumpkin beer lies primarily in the spice.
As I grew older and became a corporate cog in the produce wheel of Lowes Foods, I also spent a great deal of time stealing pumpkin pies from the deli (seasonally, of course) and polishing them off behind the swinging doors of the employees-only produce storage room. Why all the pumpkin history? To let you know that I haven't merely jumped on the pumpkin bandwagon in my later years. No, Friends, I started young on this journey, and now I'm simply a grown man in search of my next pumpkin high.
Coincidentally, the obligatory seasonal adult beverage these days seems to be the pumpkin ale. There are no fewer than ten available to me locally, and they're pushing the "Oktoberfest" brews further back on the shelf each fall. First, let's understand that anything infused with pumpkin probably shouldn't be appealing. It is technically a squash, after all, and I doubt that anyone is waiting for the leaves to turn so they can make a bee line to the store for a microbrew with a light gourd finish. I'll spare the technicalities here and assume that we can all agree that the appeal of a pumpkin beer lies primarily in the spice.
My mission for several years has been to find the perfect pumpkin beer. This year's offering is vast enough that I feel like it warrants some due diligence. Which one will most please a fat man who was once a fat kid who wrote shitty poems about pumpkin pie? The nominees are:
For sobriety's sake, I tested no more than a double shot of each beer (although all were finished off later). In an effort to maintain impartiality, I asked my wife to serve as an alternate juror / blinded taster.
Surprisingly, we rated the beers almost exactly alike, so the letter grades below represent our mutual assessment. And the winner is...
So there you have it, Folks. I feel like I've done my fellow man a great service. If only one regular Joe can be persuaded to bypass the Smuttynose for a Buffalo Bill's pumpkin ale, then my work here is done. Enjoy.
Good stuff. I myself cannot resist anything pumpkin flavored. We should have considered this when we started our ill-fated brewery back in '07.
ReplyDeleteAny old monkey can write a blog. You need a pen name. How about Thunder?
ReplyDeleteJeremy
I agree with the buffalo bill pumpkin ale. I just got it and thought it was really good. much better than the harvest or samuel adams oktoberfest. I was curious what other people thought of it, so i went to beeradvocate and it got terrible reviews. not sure why. beer snobs are a little too full of themselves bc its def. a great pumpkin ale
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