Review – Southern Tier Pumking

Pumking is Southern Tier in a bottle.  Southern Tier does not do flavor halfway.  Choklat was the most powerfully flavored beer in the Tournament of Stouts.  Pumking will absolutely be the most powerfully flavored beer in the Tournament of Pumpkins.  The nose is overpowering - in my opinion this is a wonderful thing.  I love to know how the beer tastes before it ever hits my lips.  The spices mostly hit on the sides of my tongue and bubble up in the aftertaste.  Mouthfeel on Pumking is smooth; bubbles are sparse in a properly settled pour.  There is a bitter aftertaste that isn't hoppy, but more a product of the spices infused in the beer. 

The color is actually a little on the light side of copper, but still well within the standard for this genre of beer.

It's been no secret that Pumking is one of my favorite pumpkin ales, and I think it has a very strong chance to go all the way in this tournament.  It may, however, fall prey to the same issue that Choklat ran into in the earlier tourney; the flavor is so intense that after a while you just want a break.  Unlike Choklat, though, I can actually drink a whole bottle (22 oz).  That's a bit dangerous, though, as Pumking is (like any truly good beer) a decently heavy hitter, clocking in at a mean 9.0% ABV.  The high ABV adds just a touch of sweet that does well to enhance the flavor.

Southern Tier is a craft brewery in Lakewood, NY, and they have a huge selection of seasonals.  I’m a fan of Choklat, Pumking, Heavy Weizen, and Krampus.  Check ‘em out if you like full-flavored beers.  Bud Light fans beware.

Review – Big Boss Harvest Time

Big Boss has an incredible nose - perhaps the best I've ever smelled in the pumpkin ale category.  It stands out in an entirely different direction from every other pumpkin ale I've tasted or reviewed.  It's the first time where the nutmeg, the cinnamon, the spices, and everything, all stand out over the pumpkin.  Somehow the nose is amplified when you take a sip, even as the taste just seems to fall short of the nose.  The taste doesn't impact you nearly as much as the nose. The aftertaste is light - it's a characteristic I'm used to from Big Boss beers in general; a very slightly bitter but fairly pleasant sensation at the back of your tongue as you take a sip.

Pumpkin is understated in Harvest time, but it is understated in a good way.  It's not that you don't know this is a pumpkin ale; you can't miss all the spices.  It's just that it doesn't hit you in the face with it, and for once I don't mean that as a complaint.

Big Boss Brewery is located right in my hometown of Raleigh, NC, and I’m very excited to be featuring the craft brewers closest to me in the tourney.  They have a quartet of regularly available beers and a handful of seasonals (Harvest time is a seasonal), all of which are pretty highly regarded.  I’m a fan of Aces & Ates (a coffee stout) and Hell’s Belle, a Belgian-style blond ale.  They also do a bitchin’ tour on the second Saturday of every month that nets you lots of free tastes.  (Blogger likes this)

Harvest Time has what it takes to make a splash in the tournament, but unfortunately their first round matchup is with Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale, which I see as the favorite to win it all.  I’m sticking with my prediction of a first round out, but I think Harvest Time will put up a valiant fight.  Bad luck in the draw, old boy.

Final Tournament Lineup

Earlier I posted a set of beers that were definitely in the tourney (coming this Saturday!), and others I was trying to get. I had win and fail in that; one of the definites is out, but the final list has come together nicely.  Rather than seeding by price, I’m seeding this tournament by Beeradvocate rating (in parenthesis below).

Without further ado, the beers:

1. Southern Tier – Pumking (4.04)
2. Dogfish Head  - Punkin (3.90)
3. Weyerbacher  - Imperial Pumpkin Ale (3.89)
4. Carolina Beer Company – Cottonwood Pumpkin Spiced Ale (3.83)
5. Heavy Seas - The Great Pumpkin (3.82)
6. Big Boss – Harvest Time (3.80)
7. Post Road – Pumpkin Ale (3.60)
8. Blue Moon – Harvest Moon (3.11)

Notably absent is Shipyard, which I ended up not being able to get enough of in time.  I wasn’t that high on Shipyard (as you might notice from its review, but I had hoped to get it in.  Apparently the good people of the greater Raleigh area were big fans and picked it all up while I hesitated.  Also absent is New Holland Ichabod, which I actually am holding as a reserve.  It’s BA rating is 3.45, well below the beer that replaced it (Post Road), so I’m sticking with that for now.  In the event that the only one of these beers not in my personal possession right this second (Heavy Seas) doesn’t make its way here for whatever reason, Ichabod is ready to go.

That puts the matchups as:

1. Southern Tier – Pumking
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8. Blue Moon – Harvest Moon

4. CBC – Cottonwood
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5. Heavy Seas – The Great Pumpkin

3. Weyerbacher – Imperial Pumkin Ale
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6. Big Boss – Harvest Time

2. Dogfish Head – Punkin
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7. Post Road – Pumpkin Ale

My predictions:

Pumking over Harvest Moon, The Great Pumpkin over Cottonwood, Weyerbacher over Big Boss, Punkin over Post Road.  I see Heavy Seas over Cottonwood and Post Road over Punkin as the most likely upsets of round 1.

That puts my projected round two brackets as:

1. Southern Tier – Pumking
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5. Heavy Seas – The Great Pumpkin

3. Weyerbacher – Imperial Pumkin Ale
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2. Dogfish Head – Punkin

I think Pumking takes the top bracket, and Weyerbacher wins narrowly at the bottom.  For the overall winner, my money is actually on the #3 seed, Weyerbacher.  I’d probably rate Pumking as the victor in a personal test, but Southern Tier has a way of flavoring their beers that I’ve seen wear out tasters in the past, which is absolutely what happened to Choklat in the tournament of stouts.  People liked it and then got sick of it.  Pumking is more drinkable than Choklat, though, so it might have what it takes to power it through.  Anyhow, this should be fun.  Can’t wait till Saturday!

Review - Heavy Seas The Great Pumpkin

The nose from Heavy Seas Great Pumpkin is deceptive; it's the weakest point of the beer.  On first whiff, I thought this one would end up more like New Holland's Ichabod, Blue Moon's Harvest Moon, or any of the other good-but-not great entries.  The taste, though, proved me wrong.  Spice is heavy at the start of my first sip; it overpowers the pumpkin by a wide margin in a good way.  The balance isn't as far in favor of the spices as Big Boss's Harvest Time, but they are definitively the dominating taste.  The sweetness of decently high alcohol (8%) is also noticeable, and pleasantly so, in this beer. This is officially labeled as an “Imperial Pumpkin Ale,” just as is Weyerbacher’s entry in the tourney, and it lives up to the challenge.

 
I've found Heavy Seas beers to be hit-and-miss in the past, but this is one of their highlights.  Heavy Seas is a craft brewer from Baltimore, and I saw a heavy helping of their beers around when I lived in Maryland.  They have a great variety, and I'd definitely recommend picking up anything they put out for a try.  Heavy Seas Holy Sheet (a self-declared Uber Abbey Ale) is a good one, but beware - it packs a mean (9%) punch.  Both are part of their Mutiny Fleet, a set of beers with high ABV (my favorite kind).

As far as predictions go, I’d label this one a potential dark horse winner.  It has all the right stuff, and it’s one of the few that I could see myself voting all the way through. 

A word of caution – Heavy Seas has two pumpkin beers, The Great Pumpkin, and The Greater Pumpkin.  The latter is bourbon barrel-aged and higher ABV (only 9%, so don’t get too worried).  I actually prefer the lower caliber beer, but The Greater Pumpkin is also quite good.

Review – New Holland Ichabod

My first experience with New Holland was their Dragon’s Milk Oak-Aged Ale, so Ichabod had some big shoes to fill on the expectations front.  The color is pumpkin standard orange-tinted copper:

There is a definite hint of pumpkin and nutmeg in the nose.  Holiday-themed flavoring is very present, but you still get an overall amber beer flavor, which is a bit of a rarity given the genre.  Ichabod has a distinct aftertaste that actually reminds me of a weaker and slightly more bitter version of Pumking.  I don't notice the cinnamon, but then again I rarely do. 

I'm very pleasantly surprised by this brew; it's low on the ABV scale (5.2%) and decently pricey (10.94 per standard six pack).  For some reason I had it in my mind that I had tried it long ago and hated it, but that wasn’t the case at all; it was quite good, and I rather enjoyed my glass.  If you're looking for the lighter side of pumpkin this might be the right way to go.  It doesn't have a sweetened flavor that I usually like in my pumpkin ales, but that tends to come more with the higher ABV ales, such as Weyerbacher (8%) or Pumking (9%).  There is a certain bitterness about the ale that grows the more of it you drink.

New Holland is a very interesting craft brewer from Michigan, a state that has one of my favorites, who sadly won’t be in this tournament, as I have yet to see a pumpkin ale from them.  Why not give it a whirl Founders?  Why not, I ask?  Anyhow, New Holland has a lot of cool-sounding stuff; sadly I don’t know them very well.  The only other beer of theirs that I’ve been fortunate enough to get a hold of is the aforementioned Dragon’s Milk, which is excellent.  It’s also widely regarded as their best (a statement it looks like they agree with). 

I have a mixed opinion on Ichabod.  It could do well in the tournament if the judges break the right way, but if I had to put money down on it I’d peg it for a very close first-round exit, again depending on the matchup.

Review - Blue Moon Harvest Moon

This is a light pumpkin ale, but it leans more toward the sweet than the bitter.  Blue Moon manages to get the nose right, if a little weak, and the aftertaste is pleasantly in line with some of the more powerful pumpkin ales out there.  It's not overly powerful (5.7% ABV), and is quite easy to drink. The color is pumpkin-standard orange-tinted amber ale color, though I've found few that stand out in that regard.

I'm not overly clobbered with pumpkin flavoring.  Some people may like this, but I prefer my pumpkins big and bold.  It claims (on the bottle) to be flavored with pumpkin, cloves, and allspice, but I don't really notice much of anything besides the title ingredient. 

I'm inclined to rank this as a mid-range pumpkin ale, but I could see it being popular for just having an easy, light-but-noticeable, sweet flavoring to it.  I wouldn't put it as going very far depending on the matchup, but I'm definitely hanging an asterisk next to that prediction.  I'm not the unique judge for this tourney, and the popular vote may end up sending this one on a streak.  This is the first ale I've tasted that didn't have nutmeg.  I can't say for sure whether or not I miss the flavoring.  I give this one a solid “B” as a pumpkin, which is what I've come to expect from Blue Moon.  Despite being owned by MillerCoors, they deliver consistently decent beers.  They have yet to deliver me a knockout, gotta-have-it, raving-to-all-my-friends beer, but neither have they put up many disappointments.  Well done, Blue Moon.  I'm a fan, just not a huge one.

Review – Shipyard Pumpkinhead

Unfortunately, this beer starts off at a disadvantage. I’m drinking it as my second pumpkin ale of the night, and the “warm up” was Weyerbacher’s IPA* (P = Pumpkin, to be reviewed later). All I can think is that this tastes like the Bud Light of pumpkin ales. There is no nose on this, and I’m drinking it out of one of those wonderful Sam Adams glasses. How do you miss the nose when you’ve got a well shaped glass, you ask? Well… open up a bottle of X Lite. X can be anything, so long as it has a light version. They all smell the same, which is to say they don’t smell at all. I want to give this beer a fair shake, but I’m just not a huge fan.

There is a faint pumpkin flavoring to it. The aftertaste is where it most came alive to me. It’s a very lightly colored beer, which is rarely impressive to me. One of the positives of this beer is that it does feel very light, so you could drink a lot of it and not feel weighed down. It actually does quite well as a second beer, in the sense that I had a very heavy beer first and just didn’t want to get extra hammered tonight.

Given what I wanted, it succeeds, but in so doing it doesn’t impress me as a pumpkin ale at all. I can’t get over the light taste of it; pumpkin ales are known for smacking you in the face with all the cinnamon, pumpkin, and nutmeg you can handle, and in that vein I can’t help but be disappointed.

I don’t think this will be a big winner in the tourney. We haven’t yet set the pairings, though I do plan to feature this for lighter fare. I have my own biases towards the powerful and heavy, though, so we’ll see how the jury votes. Sorry, Shipyard, I’m just not a fan of this one.  Looks like the Beeradvocate review agrees.  I don’t expect this one to go very far, but I’ve been surprised before by a jury of my peers.

Shipyard is a craft brewery in Maine, and it appears they have a fairly broad selection of seasonals.  I wish I could have gotten hold of their Smashed Pumpkin, but alas, it was nowhere to be found in the Raleigh or DC areas.