Pumpkin Beers, 2011

Fall is my favorite season. It used to mean soccer season for this aged former player, Halloween with the required carving of the pumpkins and also the beauty of the changing fall leaves. Now, as an adult, there are some additional bonuses to the Fall season: eating my favorite candy from the loot my kids haul in from trick-or-treating and sampling the pumpkin-flavored brews. 

Over the years, there have been more and more pumpkin brews available. I decided to try them all (or at least all that were available in my geographic area). As a dietitian, I, of course, had to make the tasting process one that would stand up to scientific scrutiny. By instilling rigorous procedures, I made a simple tasting party into one of redundant procedures and unneeded steps. Luckily the fellow tasters infused some spontaneity and good-natured ridicule (well-deserved) at my attempt to host a double-blinded pumpkin brew tasting evaluation. 

For the record, I scoured 9 stores in 3 towns for the 6 pumpkin brews available. I met a new friend (Lori, who sold me one of the pumpkin brews and heard my tale of woe for all the stores I had visited for that particular type) and hit only one skunk with my car (it was already dead). Overall, the pumpkin brew procuring process was a lot of fun (and the skunk-stink did not persist after about a half a mile)!

I will now describe my procedures (as that is what would next follow in a scientific study) to describe what lengths I will go to for a good beer in the name of science (and also to give you a peek into my beer madness).  

Procedures:

I covered each type of beer in tin foil (including the neck label), blacked out any distinguishing marks on their caps with a Sharpie, assigned each type of beer a number and then chilled them in my beer refrigerator (yes, I have a fridge for the sole purpose of keeping my beer chilled). I asked a good friend that does not drink alcohol to be the Master Pourer and gave her the list of my numbered beers. She then assigned a letter to my numbers and poured each type for us.  She prepared the beer to be tasted in another room and brought out one type at a time. Us tasters had a beer placemat that had 6 circles with the letters A through F. As the Master Pourer brought each type out, the beer would be placed on the corresponding spot on the placemat. We also had a simplified scoring sheet that had us rate the presentation, taste, body, drinkability and the empty glass factor with a spot for the total score. Crackers (and bananas for the gluten-free dude) and water were available to cleanse our palates between tastings. 

Now here is where things get a little crazy. 

I am not an informed taster. I am more of a “I like it or I don’t like it” kind of a gal. AND after drinking less than 2 ounces (total) of the beers we were sampling I was already starting to feel the tell-tale signs of getting heated. Try infusing scientific scrutiny and scientific study rigorousness into that kind of situation! I quickly abandoned my fussy score sheet and merely ranked the 6 in order of “My Likiness”. 

One of the other tasters, we will call him The Judge, took the task to heart and composed the most eloquent, informed, jury-proven descriptions and evaluations of the beer that it sounded like he missed his calling as a beer judge! As the table declined into a pumpkin-haze of tipsiness, this taster continued to conjure up quotes that could easily be used in a Quentin Tarantino film or a clever beer commercial.  

Another taster, BrewBro, gave up almost as quickly as I did and just focused on the ones he did not like. 

My fellow lady taster, The Beauty, quickly abandoned the scorecard for a star-based system. 

Our last taster, Husband, diligently filled out his scorecard but seemed more interested in arguing each beer’s faults and strengths with the other tasters. Always the competitive one, he wanted the opportunity to guess which beer was which. 

Overall, we all had a few beers in common as our top 3. It would be tedious to publish each and every comment of every beer we tasted and what do we know anyway? We are not trained Beer Judges but we do like to judge beer. Plus we were comparing ales and lagers and one big boy boasted a 9%ABV (Hello!) so we were really comparing apples to oranges. 

But we all liked (in no particular order):

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale

Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale

Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

Bottom line: most of the pumpkin ales are good so try one! I did enjoy trying all available types at once although I would recommend 6 types as a maximum at one event if you will be hosting your own tasting party. It may be fun to see what type of tasters your friends are (do they abandon the scoring system, compose ballads to praise the tones of apricot or turn every instance into one of competition?).

For our next tasting, I will tone down the Dietitian nerdiness and instead focus on making the tasting fun (which thanks to the group happened despite my attempt at nerding it up). Or maybe we will just give The Judge a bunch of beers to taste and see what poetry he composes as a result.

Sante!

-The Beer Dietitian

(Disclaimers: None. All beers were purchased and none were provided for free by the manufacturer. The Beer Dietitian and BeerBro Tasters did not receive any compensation, financial or otherwise, to conduct this taste-test. )