As we know, it is THAT time of year. Yes, that's right. Time for BEER!
Being The Blockchain Beerologist definitely has its perks, including but not limited to getting paid to tour breweries and sample new beers! When I am not globetrotting and chugging pints, my fridge looks like a colourful mosaic of regional craft beer I enjoy sharing with the #beersaturday alliance of #beer bloggers on #hive.
This week, I am taking 3 Halloween beers for the team to amuse a legion of followers who know I don't like pumpkin. Yes you read right. I am leaning into the Halloween season and tasting that which should not be...pumpkin in Beer.
Lake of Bays - Pumpkin Ale
First up in this sacrilegious endeavor is a brewery I have not been overly kind to in comparison with some of my other preferred regional craft breweries. Lake of Bays I like the illustration on this aptly coloured label even though I am not thrilled at the prospect of tasting it. In fact, I walked right past it and had to back track when I decided it might be funny to sample it for the sake of the season.
Pumpkin Ale weighs in at 6% ABV and is recommended to be enjoyed between 6 and 8 Celsius which is a little warmer than your standard piss that needs to be near frozen to kill the taste. It pours like a brown ale and actually tastes like one too! A little sweeter with a subtle hint of pumpkin when I anticipated too much and a touch of dry spice, coming from the hops. for how much I dislike pumpkin and how often any fruit added to a beer ends up being too much, I do not hate this! In fact, I think this is a damn fine sweet brown ale I need to sample again.
Great surprise LoB!
Great Lakes - Pumpkin Ale
Great Lakes Brewery has been one of my favourite breweries for as long as I have had a beer blog. Since I am goofing off with pumpkin beer, I may as well give their pandering seasonal bad idea a try!
Great Lakes Pumpkin Ale reads like it was narrated by [Vincent Price}(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Price) and it is quite possible they are over compensating for the egregious overstep of putting pumpkin in beer. This beer is not dark enough to be a dark ale but not light enough to be a pale. It actually lands somewhere in between with a good malty base, a hoppy strength, and a spicy edge that transcends perhaps all of those standards. This was another surprisingly good beer and I am really considering a taste off between these beers.
Flying Monkeys Pumpkin Lager
My good #beersaturday buds know how much I love Flying Monkeys Brewery and what it meant to me to add this as the final stupid fuckin pumpkin beer to this edition of the world-renowned beer blog. World-class IPA and an experimental spirit to push brewing to new extremes respected by breweries all around, of course Flying Monkeys had to be here.
Theatre of Madness is a Pumkin Lager that is darker an fuller than you might like if you were looking for a standard lager. I am not sure why pumpkin beer needs to be so dark when the flesh is so light and the iconic colour is so orange. This is the darkest of the 3 pumpkin beers in this spotlight and perhaps the best. Enough malt, hops and sweetness to balance the higher level of non-beer additives almost perfectly. This seemed like a Lake of Bays with more malt, sweetness and pumpkin for perhaps the best bullshit pumpkin beer of the season.
How the hell did I manage to enjoy 3 pumpkin beers I shouldn't have? Perhaps I should give them each a try and pick the best.
#BEERSaturday!
@detlev and instantly become a beer blogger here https://hive.blog/hive-187719/@detlev/beersaturday-330 for this week's assembly of blockhain beer enthusiasts.
This week for #BeerSaturday, I would like to invite
@qwerrie who likes Radio Head which surely directly translates to beer? Take a few pictures, tag #beersaturday and raise a glass with us on Hive! Beer = retirement fund!