Southern Tier - Pumking

Tonight I'll be drinking Pumking from Southern Tier, a beer that incorporates that big, bulbous orange plant - the pumpkin.  Quiz question - is pumpkin a fruit or a vegetable?  If you google it, then you're a cheater and a failure.  If you guessed vegetable, you are also a failure.  It's a fruit!  Pumpkin beers tend to be overdone in the pumpkin/spice department, so I'm generally not a fan.  The last pumpkin beer I drank and truly enjoyed was the Summit Imperial Pumpkin Porter, back in March 2011.  The Imperial Pumking is Southern Tier's autumn seasonal, coming in a 22oz bottle with 8.6% alcohol.  Let's see how Southern Tier does with the pumpkin! 

The label on the beer features an angry-looking pumpkin with a crown on it's head, in the traditional Southern Tier label style.  The beer is a deep copper color, perfectly clear, with just a small amount of lace forming.  Aroma is unlike anything I've ever smelled in a beer.  Period.  It's a strong smell of pumpkin bread and vanilla extract, very very sweet.  Just a hint of spice in there, but it's hard to find in all the other sweet stuff.  The taste really doesn't bring any surprises after the nose, it starts off with that pumpkin-bread sweetness.  Then comes the faintest touch of cinnamon and nutmeg, and grainy caramel malts on top of it all - reminds me of gingerbread.  The alcohol is well hidden in the flavor, but it brings plenty of warmth to the table.  One thing I keep noticing is a powdery, chalky sensation the beer leaves after each sip.  Like a mouthfull of nutmeg powder.  I'm struggling to get past it.

Overall Rating:  This beer features prominent pumpkin flavors, no doubt about it.  It's a sweet, dessert-style beer, basically a pumpkin pie that's died and was reincarnated as a beer.  I couldn't get past the chalky nutmeg, that made it hard for me to finish.  Not a bad beer, but not for me.  C+

Shipyard - Smashed Pumpkin

Pumpkin - it makes everything better, right?  Well, in the craft beer world that isn't always the case.  It's that time of year where breweries across the country attempt to make their version of a pumpkin ale.  For better or for worse, it's almost expected these days.  You will find ales that just go WAY overboard on the spices.  Other ales will be woefully under-attenuated, creating a sweet, cloying pumpkiny mess.  I don't know if its a right of passage for these brewmasters but one thing is for certain, not every brewery should make a pumpkin-based beer.  AMIRITE?!

Shipyards iteration is one of the first pumpkin ales to show up in MN this season.  The last beer I had from these guys made me almost quit drinking all together.  Double Old Thumper was horrid.  It was one of the few craft beers I had to dump down the sink.  I know, its alcohol abuse.  But seriously, had you tasted what I did, you would have realized that the abuse onus was on Shipyard, not myself.  I'm going to give this brew a fair chance, though. I don't like being bias towards a brewery without sampling a broad selection of their line-up.  Smashed Pumpkin, lets see what u got...

The overall appearance of Smashed Pumpkin is very impressive.  The bottle art is clean and very festive.  The brew has almost the same, orange coloring as the bottle, minus the florescence of course.  The aromas are very spicy.  Plenty of pumpkin spice, cinnamon, a hint of nutmeg... so far so good.  My first sip... damnet!  They boondoggled me again!  This tastes like somebody mixed Busch Light and Hot 100 in a glass bottle and capped it with some gold foil.  Initially, the alcohol isn't harsh but the spicy cinnamon is.  I can't get past it.  There is some malty sweetness lingering in the background as the initial cinnamon blast wore off.  As everything warms the more subtle flavors start to become apparent.  At this point, it actually tastes like a very spicy pumpkin pie.  So there is a little relief in sight.  The alcohol isn't hot but does provide a nice warming feeling on the way down.

Overall - Ill be honest, I thought this beer was done for after my first sip.  Luckily, I stuck it out and found a drinkable pumpkin ale underneath the cinnamon blizkreig that I was initially greeted with.  If you find a bottle, serve it warmer than you normally would.  Its best flavors come to the surface when its just slightly chilled.  I can't say Ill be getting another bottle of this next year.  At least I wasn't forced to pour it down the drain.

To our readers - Do any of you live in an area that gets Shipyard's regular brews?  I want to know if this breweries beer just doesn't travel well or if they legitimately make crappy beer.  Most other people seem to have a good opinion of their beer.  Maybe its just me.  Let me know in the comments what you think!