Four + Brewing Company Punk'n Harvest Pumpkin Ale..never heard of it..but it was a pumpkin beer I hadn't had or ever seen of before..and it was still around in December, so fuck yes I'm gonna buy it! A bit subtle on the aroma compared to some of the others in the previous showdown. Cinnamon and pumpkin stand out..think of Pumpkinhead, but muted. Really light and crispy taste, slightly sweet... some pumpkin pie notes, spice, a little hops. Taste faded rather quickly, nothing was too too stand-out with this beer, but I couldn't find anything necessarily wrong with it either. Won't go out of my way to find it this coming fall, but I wouldn't pass it up, solid run-of-the-mill pumpkin beer.
Southern Tier Imperial Pumking. A friend had this one on Halloween and I had picked one up, but not tried it til mid-December. Let's just say tasting something when you're piss-drunk isn't usually the same as when you're totally sober..you miss out on the subtleties of the taste. 8.8% ABV and no idea on the IBU's Nice amber/orange color and foamy head. The aroma this beer put out kicks you in the nose without even getting close! Slight hop notes, heavy on the spices (cinnamon, allspice maybe), fresh pumpkin and a sweet and bready malt. Gonna call this one graham cracker-y (I'm getting more creative with descriptions and educated in the subtleties of beer!!) Slight hints of the higher ABV in the nose. The taste though, you wouldn't expect this beer to be above 8% by the way it tastes. Cinnamon and cloves in the taste, like a pumpkin pie, but lacking the vanilla and some of the crusty taste. Rather crisp for such a 'heavy' beer, and yet no vanilla, there was a definite sweetness to the beer. If it had been a bit heavier or a little less sweet, it would have made it much better. Not a bad imperial pumpkin, but a bit too sweet or a bit lacking in other areas.
Not the usual pumpkin beer offering, but I saw this in a liquor store in CT on the way home from a road trip. Reading the back..I had to pick it up, I'm a sucker for 'limited release' However, this for sure, is the embodiment of limited release. Only 2 and half hours of the bottling line is set aside for this. At 150minutes and 1 second, no more is bottled and the rest is, presumably, tossed. Very limited, indeed! And it's a higher ABV Woodchuck which is pretty cool. (6.9% ABV) Woodchuck Private Reserve Pumpkin Hard Cider. BUT, and a very big but, it's still a Woodchuck. Some pumpkin came through on the nose as well as a bit of spice..kinda smelled like someone dumped a Woodchuck on a pile of dried leaves. The taste..well there was nothing to hint that pumpkin should be anywhere on the label. It was actually more stomach-churning than a normal Woodchuck. Nice and crisp, refreshing..but drink one too quick, or have more than one and they sit weird in your stomach. Oh well, cool to at least have such a limited release at least once in my life.
Definitely not a pumpkin offering, but where I just reviewed the pumpkin Woodchuck..so might as well do the Fall Cider as well. Very sweet, slightly tart, like a normal Woodchuck Hard Cider. A little bit of spice here and there in the nose and taste, but nothing too distinctive to make me want to buy this over the regular cider. Short reviews for the two Woodchuck, I know..but that's cause I'm a beer guy..and Woodchuck isn't beer. I can stomach a good Magner's, don't get me wrong..but Woodchuck is like the Zima of the cider world..just stay away for Christ's sake!!!!
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