I am a Jolly Pumpkin: La Parcela #1 Pumpkin Ale

So I planned on my next post to be the one about the home brewing experience, but I'm currently waiting on an email to verify certain facts because I don't want to sound like an idiot when I post it. So, in the interim, I will post my review on the last of the pumpkin beers this season. Next up will be Vixen from Sam Adams, which will mark the start of the holiday beers/darker beers. But before we get to that, let's move on to the review at hand.

Before we start, I want you to do something for me. Close your eyes, and remember the tastes of every single pumpkin beer you've ever had. They each have their own special aspect that draws you in, right? Maybe it's the way they added the pumpkin, or the different spice they put in. Maybe it's bitter with hops or maybe it's smooth like pumpkin pie. However, each of them have something in common, don't they? They all have pumpkin. Nearly all of them have cinnamon or nutmeg. So while they have their differences, you sort of know what to expect when you take your first sip. Some elements may surprise you, but it's always got that baseline. I want you to imagine the taste of every single one of those beers.

Now throw all that out the window.

Why, you ask? Because La Parcela #1 Pumpkin Ale (brewed by Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in Dexter, MI) has nothing in common with those beers. Nada. Zip. Not a thing. Looking for true originality in a pumpkin beer? Well consider this beer as worth trying. In addition to the description below, this beer was aged in oak barrels, and has an ABV of 5.9%.

"Okay, so the joke was Jolly Pumpkin doesn't brew a pumpkin beer. Well, now we do. Packed with real pumpkin, hints of spice, and a gentle kiss of cacao to liven the soul. An everyday easy way to fill your squashy quotient. Guess now folks will have to find something else to joke about..."

Color: Egads, what a head! (It literally spilled over the sides of the glass.) It takes a while to disappear, and is quite thick and foamy. The beer itself is spot on the color of a pumpkin, and is a bit cloudy. Pours a very light golden color, almost clear. Has some nice carbonation going. (I always enjoy it when I can see the bubbles moving.)

Aroma: Very sour / tart. It smells like a lambic, and not very much like a pumpkin. This is my first hint that not everything that I expect this beer to be will be true. I smell and sniff and smell, and I cannot detect any trace of pumpkin or spices. Maybe a tiny bit, but that could just be me trying to taste something pumpkin-y about this. Not that it's a bad smell or anything, I just wanted to be sure I'm not missing something.

First Sip: Wow. Wow wow wow wow! The most different pumpkin beer I've had, and probably the most original. Very, very tasty...but I can't taste the pumpkin! It tastes pretty much like it smells, and is very good, if you like sour beers. A clean taste, a tiny bit of sweetness, maybe.

Mouthfeel: The tartness is absolutely amazing. There's a little bit of puckering, but overall it's light and not as sour as some other beers I've had. There's also a little bit of bitterness underneath, which could be the pumpkin/spices, or it could be the hops. I don't know, because I'm still having a hard time tasting anything other than the tartness. There is a little bit of sweetness associated with it, perhaps due to the cacao (which is basically chocolate or cocoa beans), or maybe because it was aged in oak barrels, which usually give a brew a vanilla-like taste (though I can't taste that either). I'd like to try this beer without one of the ingredients listed and see how the taste differs.

Aftertaste: A bit bitter at the end, maybe a hint of pumpkin. I'm not sure, my senses are befuddled.

Overall, a beer I really enjoyed. It's definitely still a "fall" beer, but I couldn't taste a lot of the pumpkin or spices. Still, I'd definitely have another glass if offered, and I'd definitely recommend this to others. Even if you can't taste the pumpkin, it's still an intriguing brew.

YARRR.

Yarr and avast, me mateys! I bring to ye a tale of the Heavy Seas, argh! I be reviewin' THE GREAT PUMPKIN Imperial Pumpkin Ale, the saltiest sea dog to ever sail the seven seas!

I could totally be a pirate, right?

Like I said, this review is for The Great Pumpkin Imperial Pumpkin Ale, brewed by Heavy Seas as part of their Mutiny Fleet brewing series. I just looked it up, and I discovered that there is another pumpkin beer called The Great'er Pumpkin Ale which was aged in bourbon barrels, is a very limited release, and holy shit I need to get me some of that. I think I might have missed it, but there's other beers that were aged in this way coming out soon. Look here to stay updated: http://www.hsbeer.com/beers/mutiny-fleet

Anyway, lets stay focused on the beer at hand and NOT get antsy about all those other beers.

This beer (and really all Mutiny Fleet beers) is 8% ABV, and it goes up from there.

Color: A brown-orange caramel color. Pour a lighter gold color, but both the pour and the beer in the glass is quite dense. There is no way to see through this--it is like the murky ocean moments before a storm, and them BAM a wave hits you and suddenly you're battling with Cthulhu, except he has a pumpkin for a head. This beer has a thin white head that disappears almost immediately. There is little to no visible carbonation.

Aroma: Pumpkin--pretty much the staple of pumpkin beers by now. I think it's a requirement that they have to smell like pumpkin or some variation of that. What makes this beer different is that it smells more pumpkin-y than most, and instead of spices or cinnamon or hops being the secondary aroma, this one has malts. Not only that, but you can practically smell the alcohol. Not only that, but you're suddenly convinced that piracy is our only option and you invest in triangular shaped hats and bandannas.

First Sip: You get a good hit of the pumpkin, followed by the swift realization that this beer is different. It's strong for one. For two, you can taste pumpkin, bitterness, and malts. It also has a strong alcohol presence--one might describe this beer as boozy (which is not a bad thing). It creates quite the first impression, and if the last beer you tried was the Pumple Drumpkin then let us make this analogy: Pumple Drumpkin was a nice quiet float down a river. The Great Pumpkin is battling a raging sea, swallowing mouthfuls of salt water, and trying to avoid gigantic whirpools that lead down into the depths of Davy Jones' locker.

Mouthfeel: There's more spices now, but it's still the pumpkin up front. It's a new sensation to taste pumpkin, malts, and alcohol. There's also an ever present bitterness that comes from the hops, although I feel they're there to add even more body to this beer through the bitterness, and to enhance the other tastes, rather than to be tasted on their own. The spices come through a bit more at the end. And of course, there's that malty, boozy taste that makes you deliciously light headed. This is a strong, bold beer, and really damn good. It's subtle in some aspects (the spices, for example), but nothing really hides in this beer.


Aftertaste: That kind of boozy taste, bitterness, and spices. This sticks around and doesn't fade, just like your desire to buy a parrot doesn't fade, just like your thirst for adventure will never leave, just like the fact that although you defeated The Great Pumpkin Cthulhu, you know he's only biding his time down in the deeps until he can strike again.

Congratulations, you are now a pirate.

OTHER NEWS: Today I helped to home brew beer, which was a lot of fun. To be honest, 85% of it is standing around drinking beer waiting for the right time to throw stuff into the beer you're brewing. Okay, so you don't really throw stuff in, but you get what I mean. A blog post on that experience should be up soon! And I say that with trepidation because I'm really bad at updating this. But let's stay positive and I'll try and get it up before Thanksgiving.

Cisco Brewing's Pumple Drumpkin

So remember how I said I would review another pumpkin beer, even if I had to do it in the freezing cold and semi-dark?

Well, I didn't have to do it in the cold or the dark. But I would have, and that's what matters.

We actually ended up going to our friend's house because we still didn't have power by the time I got home from work. So I brought my beer with me and reviewed it there. Now, I have to say that when I review a beer, I get really into it. Before the bottle's even opened, I take pictures of the bottle / label. I have someone (usually my dad) pour it into a glass while I take pictures of that. Then I take about a billion pictures of how the beer looks in the glass. Maybe I'll pair it with the bottle if the label looks especially cool. Then I spend time considering the color, the amount of carbonation, whether it looks clear or murky, the size/color of the head, etc. Then I, for lack of a better description, stick my nose in the glass and smell. And smell. And consider the smell. Then smell it again.

At this point usually ten minutes or so have passed and I'm getting weird looks from people who aren't used to the whole process. I dont think I got any weird looks that night, but it's definitely the sort of thing where if people dont get it, they'll wonder what the hell I'm doing.

Anyway, onward.

This pumpkin beer was the Cisco Brewing's Pumple Drumpkin, which is based in Nantucket, MA. They use local Nantucket pumpkins to make this beer. They also put this description on the bottle:

"On Nantucket a Pumple named Drumkin, brewed up some great ale with his pumpkins. One and all came to savor the delicious flavor, then wobbled around quite like bumpkins. At Cisco they thought, 'This De-Lish! Let’s make some more because we wish, to please all the tourists, and locals and purists, with the best ale that we can accomplish!'"

It also has a rather silly label.

Color: A dark amber with lighter red/orange colors where the light shines through. It pours with a thin white head that slowly disappears, but leaves a sexy slip of lace on the side of the glass. You have no idea how long I've been waiting to type that sentence.

The snowflakes on the glass just add to the allure.

Aroma: Slightly more pumpkin-y than the others with a hint of cinnamon. There's less of a brown sugar sweet smell, so the pumpkin is more prominent. There's also a sort of bitter, earthy smell, which comes from the hops. It's a bit unexpected, so at first I didn't recognize it. Even with the Dogfish Head Punkin, I didn't really smell the hops, just tasted them through the bitterness in the beer. And you don't really expect a prominent hop smell from a pumpkin beer--you expect pumpkin smells. So it took me a moment to sort out what I was smelling.

First Sip: Cinnamon and pumpkin with bitterness and hop taste. It tastes kind of like the outdoors, if that makes any sense at all. (You know, kind of like on a fall day after you've chainsawed a couple large tree branches and there's that cool, leafy, smell in the air?) The hops are actually more flavorful than the pumpkin, and it's the cinnamon that's more of the secondary flavor.

Mouthfeel: The bitterness is there, and the pumpkin comes through with it. Again, it's got more hop taste than the Punkin. The Punkin had more cinnamon/brown sugar/spices that you taste more than the bitterness. In Pumple Drumpkin, you get the pumpkin, the hops, and a little bit of spices. Overall, it's a hoppier beer than I thought it would be, and the pumpkin kind of comes through in the background and at the end.

Aftertaste: Some sweeter pumpkin-hop taste, then it fades away leaving just slight hints of cinnamon.

Overall, it's a good solid beer. As a beer itself, it's really rather tasty. As a pumpkin beer, it's not my favorite, but it's one I would have again. So if you're looking for a really flavorful pumpkin taste, I would look elsewhere first. If you're just looking for a beer to enjoy, then this would be a good candidate.

Update on Beer-y Things

Okay, so I don't have a beer review....yet.

Before that lovely storm hit on Saturday, I journeyed to Julio's, one of the best places in the whole world (www.juliosliquors.com) The first time I went I was totally overwhelmed and I'm pretty sure I spent the first 15 minutes standing in front of the beer section and drooling. I spent the next 40 minutes in a sort of blissful state, wandering around and grabbing things that looked good. I weep for all the beer I left behind, but it was a great experience and I got a lot of delicious beer.

The second trip I took was a bit more controlled because I knew what to expect. I also knew what I was looking for--straight up pumpkin beers. Because you know, I'm becoming slightly obsessed. That's okay though. I'm sure I'll move on to holiday-ish beers soon, along with stouts, porters, winter warmers, etc. Anyway, I got the following:

Cisco Brewers, Pumple Drumpkin
Heavy Seas, The Great Pumpkin (Imperial Pumpkin Ale)
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales -- La Parcela, #1 Pumpkin Ale

I wish I could show you pictures now, but at 6:30 PM that night, we lost power and it has not been restored yet (I'm writing this from a remote location....a SECRET LOCATION). So while I might have pictures on my camera, I can't upload them to my computer. And I really, really want to put up a beer review, but I (and you) must content ourselves with just this.

The plan is, I will go home and, in the freezing cold and semi-dark, drink some Pumple Drumpkin from Cisco Brewers and write out my review with my half-frozen fingers. That will make you appreciate it more, right? Right???

Also upcoming is a growler of home brewed pumpkin beer from a secret contact. Okay, so it doesn't have to be a secret contact, but I like saying that because it sounds cooler than saying some I know through work is giving me beer.

Also, here are some other pumpkin beers I've tasted in the mean time, but didn't write a review for because I am lazy:

Dogfish Head Punkin -- True to their legacy, this is delicious. Like, really delicious. The best one I've tried so far, probably, because they're able to integrate hops and pumpkin into some sort of flavor tango, spiced with cinnamon, and if my memory serves me correctly, brown sugar. Even better, the name comes from Punkin Chunkin, an event in Delaware where contestants literally build trebuchets, air canons, and other machines that can fling pumpkins really, really far. This is actually happening Nov 4 - 6, so I recommend picking up some Dogfish Head Punkin and watching this, because it will be amazing. (http://www.punkinchunkin.com/)

Shipyard Pumpkin Ale -- I had this at the BBC (British Brewing Company) and, more recently, last night at Applebees. They put cinnamon and brown sugar around the rim of the glass if you want, which is very tasty. It makes this a bit sweet at first, but the beer itself does have a little bit of bitterness. And of course, it tastes like a pumpkin.

I also had another pumpkin beer at Sacco's Bowl Haven in Somerville a couple weekends ago, but I completely forget the name. Cambridge something? I saw it at Julio's too, and I cannot remember the name at all. The bottle had a blue label. That doesn't help, I know. Anyway, it was tasty. I'll get that name by my next post, but it too was a good beer. Sacco's also has some other nearby craft brews, including Pretty Things, which is located in Somerville. They also have the best flatbread pizza anywhere, and candlepin bowling.

So that's pretty much an update on what's been going on since my last post. I'll hopefully be able to post another review soon, but no promises... they say we're not supposed to get power back until tomorrow night around 11:45. So until then, I'm planning on drinking beer and freezing.

Mostly freezing.