A lot of craft beer fans can get worn out with overabundance of Pumpkin beers, or pumpkin-pie spice beers, and hope to be done with them after Halloween. But I think a good, strong pumpkin beer makes a good after-dinner novelty with any holiday meal, especially Thanksgiving.
Case in point: Pumking, by Southern Tier Brewing of upstate Lakewood, New York. The brew was introduced in 2007, and shook up the pumpkin pie beer category of carrying with it 8.6% alcohol by volume, becoming an “imperial” pumkpin beer. Not content to dash in a bit of pie spice, this is a true pumpkin beer, extracting fermentability from the orange pulpy squash. Admittedly, pumpkin offers as much flavor as any squash with no butter, marshmallow brown sugar, so some spices will still be added.
I would suggest a small, rounded glass, like a chalice, or some stemmed wine glass, to let the “Beer-curious” hold it to the light and get a good sniff. This does pour with a bit of a head, but it faded out as I was setting up the picture. You’ll see an orange beer body with a lot of particles floating in it. That’s okay, it’s a bit of spice or yeast typical of a beer that undergoes minimal filtering.
The smell should make you think of a pumpkin pie, yes, with its usual cinnamon and nutmeg additions.
But the taste is a different thing. First, I get prickly effervescence, helping to build the impression of those tree bark spices, or even mild peppercorns. Best of all, there’s the unmistakeable impression of whipped cream. Perhaps that’s from vanilla, or a side effect of cinnamon, but it only seems to come up in beers with actual pumpkin. A local example for me is Wild Onion (Barrington, IL) Pumpkin Ale. My all-time local favorite was Flossmoor Station’s Big Black Pumpkin, which added cocoa nibs to the mix. Chances are your local brewpub has tried something similar.
The alcohol will help cushion your senses for those hours of football still to come, or for the ritual of putting up the Christmas tree while the kids insist on cranking up carols from the boring radio station that turned into “The Christmas Lite-FM” right after Halloween.
Disclaimer: I purchased this beer myself for the purpose of this review. I got it as Costco for $5.50 for a 22 oz. “bomber.” Costco rotates its beer stock pretty quickly, so if it’s not their, your local “good beer” store might have some.
