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.

Announcing: Tournament of Pumpkins

[Farnsworth voice] Good news, everybody!  [/Farnsworth voice]  We’re getting the tournament back together – but this time it’s a battle royale of fall seasonals.  This November 20th, my friends and I will gather to decide the best pumpkin ale we could get our hands on in full bracket-style glory.  Eight pumpkin ales enter, only one reigns supreme.  It should be a good time for one and all, and just as I did with the Tournament of Stouts, I’ll be posting to the blog, reviewing the contestants and musing other beery* thoughts. 

We learned a few things from our first tournament experience, and I’ll list them here for your reading amusement/benefit, should you ever choose to do a tournament of your own. 

1. The first and by far most important lesson learned from the Tournament of Stouts is that there is such a thing as too much awesome beer.  Sixteen beers is too many to review in bracket-style in one night.  By the 20th or so taste, what I wanted to win changed drastically.  Take the case of Southern Tier’s Chocolat.  I voted for it enthusiastically for the first two tastes, and it did indeed make it through to the semifinal.  I regretted that last vote for the rest of the tourney, as the smell of something so rich actually got to be sickening.  Cutting the field to eight beers cuts the number of tastes in half (yay exponentials), and allows you to be able to appreciate each beer in the same state, before your taste buds start telling you to lay off the dark stuff.  Seeing as how everything we’re reviewing this time is pumpkin-flavored, this is a very important lesson to have learned.

2. Two-ounce pours are easier to judge with.  A one-ounce pour is just too little to properly appreciate everything about a beer.  Given lesson #1, this is an easier rule to apply.  Wider cups help you to get the nose of each of the samples as well.  I recommend white mouthwash cups.

3. White or clear cups are very important – but be consistent.  We started with some white cups, then went to smaller wine-tasting clear cups.  Switching was a mistake.  You definitely want something neutral; drinking out of a blue cup will change your taste perceptions.  It’s true.  Switching from white to clear didn’t really damage the tournament, but it somehow threw me off. 

4. Have a bunch of neutral snacks.  Crackers, pretzels, or just plain old bread are great for cleansing the palate when you’re doing a lot of tasting.  Wine tastings will also usually have something of the sort; it helps to feel taste balance, not to mention gets something in your stomach to soak up all the delicious, delicious beer.

The list of contestants for the Tournament of Pumpkins is actually up for some discussion at the moment.  I know that the following are in.

1. Southern Tier Pumking
2. Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale
3. Dogfish Head Punkin
4. Blue Moon Harvest Moon
5. Shipyard Pumpkinhead

As for the last three, they could be…

1. Heavy Seas Great Pumpkin
2. Heavy Seas Greater Pumpkin
3. Cottonwood Pumpkin
4. Wolaver’s Will Stevens Pumpkin Ale
5. Hoppin Frog Frog’s Hollow Double Pumpkin Ale
6. anything else that catches my eye in the next couple of weeks

I would love – LOVE  - to get Hoppin Frog, but unfortunately their distributor in North Carolina doesn’t deliver to anywhere I can easily get to.  And while I’m at it – I actually spoke to the guy that (allegedly) was in charge of getting stuff to the Raleigh area.  He told me that all Total Wines in the Raleigh area had it.  I called every single one of them, and absolutely none of them did.  Most hadn’t heard of it.  Seriously, Hoppin Frog – what’s up with your distributors?  And why don’t you ship to MD?  You make a pumpkin ale that wins the gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival, but you won’t ship it to all your fans, even the ones that usually have access to Hoppin Frog beers.  Total Wine has plenty of BORIS the Crusher (which is awesome).  But no Frog’s Hollow (which is probably also awesome).

Anyhow, I’ll get that list solidified and the reviews out in the next couple of weeks.  Stay tuned!