Ars Technica has a nice article on a side effect of alcohol, “intentionality bias.” The set up is rather elaborate and specific in the test, but the findings do make me wonder how intentionality bias figures into my favorite side effect of alcohol, the drunken rant.
Smuttynose, beyond having a website that doesn’t use flash in obscene ways and also has a page for each beer, is a really fine brewery I just haven’t made enough time for in my life. This autumn, I decided to remedy that (as much as I could), by pairing up their Old Brown Dog and their Pumpkin Ale for a single setting.
My hope was that the pairing would be instructional. Pumpkin Ales vary, but often have some similarities to brown ales in that they have a great deal of malt flavor (as far as pumpkin is a malt) and veer away from the hoppiness found in ale styles like American Pale Ales and IPAs.
Well, I fucked that up in the best possible way.
Old Brown Dog
I like Brown Ales a lot. They are an often overlooked style which, I think, would be wholly more appealing to more people than the obligatory American Pale Ale or IPA that every brewery seems to make. As Porter and Stout are to malt and IPAs are to hops, Brown Ale is to balance.
And Smuttynose’s Brown Ale is simply fantastic. It’s big, weighing in at 6.5% ABV, has a big rich body, and yet is balanced with the necessary hops to make it very drinkable. This would be an alarmingly good session beer that could put me under the table before I realized what was going on: for it’s comparable bigness (in every respect), it simply doesn’t seem heavy.
All the proper flavors are there, and I won’t bother to list them: it’s a truly fabulous and unapologetic Brown Ale, with a great personality and a capital “B.”
Pumpkin Ale
And so I opened up the Pumpkin Ale expecting more of the same kind of balance, perhaps a pumpkin tempered, less hoppy beer complimented with spices. Smuttynose’s Pumpkin Ale has pumpkin, spices, hops, and malt, but that’s about as much in common with my expectation as this beer would be.
The best way I can describe this beer is as such: say you took a hoppy, fine American Pale Ale and de-paled it by adding enough Pumpkin to turn it a beautiful golden color. Then you spiced it with a light hand, more akin to how much spice is used in a good wheat beer than the over-the-top pie-spice you often find in Pumpkin Ales. If you did all that, and the result was awesome, it would be pretty close to Smuttynose’s Pumpkin Ale.
If you generally avoid Pumpkin Ales because you’re a hop head, or you dislike fruit in your beer, but you want to feel vaguely seasonal, this is the Pumpkin for you. The only flavor similarity to its Brown Ale cousin is that it is incredibly agreeable in every way. It would be a great session beer that you wouldn’t get tired of, in spite of the Pumpkin.
And thus ends my experiment. I learned comparatively little from the comparison (these could have been two completely random beers for all their similarities), except that Smuttynose makes two excellent beers. If I were going to do it again, I might try the beers in the opposite order.
Who am I kidding? I’d love to try this again, in either order.
I do not want to imply that this brewery owed me, but I did feel compelled recently to check out a Southern Tier seasonal that would remind me fondly of the brewery. If any debt needed to be paid, Harvest settled up with interest.
Southern Tier Harvest: A Lovely Golden Color
To be brief, this beer is hopped with fresh English hops and then additionally dry hopped. Southern Tier claims that the malt to stand up to this hop explosion is fresh as well. All this to create a very special Extra Special Bitter for fall.
I haven’t had enough beers with “fresh malt” (that seems like an oxymoron) to tell if there is anything to this ingredient. However, I will say that the beer’s malt taste had a certain reminiscence of Tumbler, the other freshly malted beer I’ve had (it was a good reminiscence, to be clear). This beer also seems like a kindred spirit to Sierra Nevada’s Southern Hemisphere due to the clear, sharp hops flavor.
I don’t know if it is the “freshness” of the ingredients, but this beer really does have flavors that absolutely pop out of the glass. It isn’t a staid, sweet maltiness or a bland, bitey hoppiness. It’s a symphony of very distinct, nicely calibrated flavors. All in all, fantastic.
“Is this normal?”
“It’s awfully doughy and yeasty. I don’t know.”
“It smells like Cheerios. … Rancid cheerios.”
“It’s sickly sweet, but it has some… it’s like a creamsicle. I really think it’s like a creamsicle.”
“It has a pumpkin flavor, though.”
“A pumpkin creamsicle?”
“A rancid pumpkin creamsicle?”
“I can’t get the taste out of my mouth.”
An hour later, my drinking companions still couldn’t get the flavor out of their mouths. I still tasted it the next day. It wasn’t necessarily horrible, but it wasn’t very good. Two of the more adventuresome of us finished the bomber (all right, one of them was me), mostly wondering what was going on (or going wrong) with this beer.
The next morning (“Burp!” Yup, that’s it.), I decided there were only two explanations. One, that the beer was just way to green and needed to ferment or age much longer. (“Green beer” is a term I’ve heard brewers use to describe a beer that is still fermenting or aging. There may be a better, more technical term.) The few times I’ve had green beer, it tasted sickly sweet and lingeringly bitter. The other explanation, which is more likely, is that the beer was spoiled with some ne’er-do-well bacteria.
I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t a fault in the beer. It’s from a fabulous brewery with a great history brewing this style, imperial ales, even with pumpkin.
Still, we’ll see if I pick up another bottle.
An Oktoberfest is actually a very specific style, a sort of malted-up version of a lager that provides a “depth of malt character” (in the words of the BJCP Style Guide). I always forget that the beer is grouped with Vienna Lager as an “European Amber Lager.” Perhaps my forgetfullness is in part due to the fact that my favorite “Oktoberfests” aren’t very good examples of the style.
Case in point, Flying Dog’s Dogtoberfest. I love this beer, in no small part due to its caramel kick. It is a perfectly brewed brown lager with not only “depth” in the malt, but an almost porter-esque light caramel note that blends and balances the beer out perfectly. It’s rich and tasty, and completely fails to meet the guidelines for an Oktoberfest:
Aroma: … Caramel aroma is inappropriate.
Flavor: … Balance is toward malt, though the finish is not sweet. Noticeable caramel or roasted flavors are inappropriate.
hmm. And yet, Flying Dog is happy to point out that Dogtoberfest has an “intriguing caramel finish.”
I still really enjoy this beer. It’s perhaps my favorite Oktberfest, er, -ish beer.
Perhaps, though, this “fault” is why Flying Dog calls the beer “Dogtoberfest” and notes that the origins of the holiday that the beer celebrates are shrouded in mystery. (Scroll down for the history. Honestly, it’s worth it, especially if you love wiener dogs. Why else would I link to the same page three times?).
Anchor has one of the most illustrious histories in American Brewing. For example, they make (and have complicated legal claims) about one of the most uniquely American styles, Steam Beer. Being synonymous with a storied style means that you’re allowed to celebrate yourself with something special. So, they did.
To celebrate 30 years at their current location (and to emphasize that they have an illustrious history wherein they’ve been at their sixth location for 30 years, longer than many breweries have been in existence), Anchor released a special American Pale Ale, Humming Ale (it’s worth it to follow the link to read the history). At a time of year when browns, pumpkins, and oktoberfests reign supreme, this is a welcome deviation from the seasonal norm.
The beer is maltier than many pale ales, and has more fruit qualities than I normally think of in the style. As such, it’s a fitting autumn beer; it has a bit more malt and body than a standard issue Pale Ale. It is, however, hoppy to beat back the band in true American Pale Ale stye. This beer has enough bite to match Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale, but enough of those… steam like? … qualities to be clearly Anchor.
If you’re a fan of Anchor or American Pale Ales, I’d recommend seeking out this beer. Ditto if you just want a break from the beers of the season.
Every year, Brooklyn Brewery whips up Post Road Pumpkin Ale (Sigh. Why do so many breweries have exclusively Flash sites?). The beer is a lovely example of the style. It is buttery in the mouth, spicy, and has a bit of fitting bite at the end. The beer’s spices are middle of the road (forgive the pun): there are more lightly spiced and more heavily spiced examples. Post Road has a very approachable amount of nutmeg and cinnamon, and it’s more drinkable for it.
For me, this beer really is fall: it pours an absolutely beautiful golden orange color, and has an almost apple-cider quality (it’s as if apple cider were made of pumpkins… and beer). Because it’s so fitting, I consider this my reference beer for pumpkin ales and I love to start the season with it. It may not be perfect, but it is very very good.
Sierra Nevada’s Tumbler (brewery site) replaces Anniversary Ale (article from Beer News on the switch), and I couldn’t be happier. It’s not that Anniversary wasn’t good, it was a fantastic IPA, but that I’m not sure the world needed another hoppy ale variation from a company with two in the regular stable (Pale Ale and Torpedo), two seasonals (Celebration Ale and the, albeit a lager, Summerfest), and two special wet-hopped ales (Northern and Southern Hemisphere, respectively). Although I’m sad to see Anniversary go, that it’s been replaced with a Brown Ale makes it completely worthwhile.
This is a very good brown ale. It seems on the lighter side for a brown (perhaps it’s the fresh malt they use), and is not excessively sweet or malty. It is definitely not a toffee or butterscotch-ey brown, and would seem at home on a warm or cool fall day. It has a clean finish, and, without being unnecessarily bitter, definitely has the bite and brisk finish that you’d expect from Sierra Nevada.
With all that said, my only complaint is that this beer isn’t a regular. How can a company that produces a Porter, a Stout, and a Wheat beer year round justify only brewing a versatile Brown Ale for three months out of the year? Of course, Sierra Nevada isn’t alone in making this style an occasional. I probably can’t drink enough of it to turn the market around, but the beer is good enough I might try.
In the meantime, hopefully other breweries will follow suit and brew up a brown. Moreover, hopefully this beer, or one similar, might find its way into the regular Sierra Nevada line up.
I’ve had my first pumpkin beer of the season, and it’s fantastic.
Most styles of beer, no matter how seasonal, can be had year round. Certainly, summer brings more lagers, winter more stouts. But the most imperial of stouts can be found in July, and some very good kolsch in the dead of winter. Consumerism, globalization, and an insane amount of resources have made it possible to get your malt and hop fix in whatever form you prefer, anytime.
Or, almost. There are some notable beer styles which only happen once a year: the spiced Christmas beer, the Octoberfest, and–nestled in between–pumpkin ale. True, most rare seasonals have alternatives. Christmas ales are a fairly loose style: a heavily spiced white or a Belgian might get you through the long 11 months between releases (and the high alcohol content of winter warmers tends to age well anyway). Octboerfest is remarkably specific, but I’ve always found that a lighter brown can suffice. There is, however, no substite for pumpkin beer.
Blame the American distaste for fruit in beer (inspired by the Germans and their Reinheitsgebot), blame the lack of taste for traditional English ales, blame… the lack of fresh of pumpkin. I’ll admit, it may be difficult to blame a pragmatic concern or a constraint based on natural laws. (You could blame lazy genetic engineers… come on, Salmon?) Blame or acceptance aside, pumpkin beer is not to be had but at a single time of year.
And it is really a shame. The style, and it is a style, arguable the first truly American one, has a tremondous range. From Buffalo Bill’s very light, refreshing Weyerbacher’s Imperial Pumpkin Ale, light to dark, crisp to heavy, malt to hop are represented. The common ingedients are ale yeast, pumpkin, and spices. Just to see each brewer’s twist on the style, I always want to drink every pumpkin beer that I can get.
Drink These Pumpkin Beers
All that said, I had my first Pumpkin this year and it almost killed every other pumpkin beer for me, making seeking out pumpkin beer seem almost pointless. Schlafly’s Pumpkin Ale is simply marveluous. It’s a great beer, period. The fact that it’s brewed with pumpkin and butternut squash (you read that right) only makes it more amazing. The beer is dark (for a pumpkin), hoppy (for a pumpkin), and incredibly flavorful. It absolutely sings, and would make a marvelous session.
Not Bad Photography: Schlafly Pumpkin Ale is Heavenly
I’m not sure it’s good enough to win over someone who doesn’t like fruit or pumpkin in their beer, but if any beer could, this one is it.
Yes, I drank a year old bottle of beer that came in a light green bottle. Yes, it was a “light” beer (a term which is little more than marketing, and has no technical meaning). It was, at that, a Heineken, a beer famous for getting skunked because of its delicate nature (honestly, drink Heineken in a keg can to try it).
One year old Heineken Light. It was horrible.
I poured out the remainder of the six pack. My kitchen sink seems to drain faster now.
I’m giving this the “best post ever” tag.
Aw, thanks 
Hopefully I really captured the horribleness.
In related news, my sink now has a weird smell I can’t get rid of.
woolwine are discussing. 
I’m just gonna quote this for truth: “How can a company that produces a Porter, a Stout, and a Wheat beer year round justify only brewing a versatile Brown Ale for three months out of the year?” Word. Moar brown ales plz.