The Definitive Summer Guide To Pumpkin Beers

Wait what?  Pumpkin beers in the summer?  Yes indeed, as the breweries fight to be the first one with pumpkin beers on the shelves the release dates have continues to creep up, to the point where Crown Valley's Pumpkin Smash was released on August 1st this year in Baton Rouge!  Whether you look at Summer in the celestial sense of June 21st to September 21st, or in the Louisiana sense of April-May until basically early October, August 1st is pretty much right in the middle. That being said, here are some of the pumpkin beers we can expect to see around Baton Rouge, and my thoughts...

Ace Pumpkin Cider - Obviously a cider and not a beer, this is a 5% post-Labor Day release. My suggestion: sure, if you really like cider.

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale - No.

Brooklyn Brewery Post Road - A traditional pumpkin ale, it's listed as August-November availability so expect to see it any day now.  It's absolutely worth a try, but don't get your hopes up for something extremely daring.  My suggestion: try it when it comes out, and if you see some still around come Thanksgiving, grab some more. With a minimal hop profile, a little age won't hurt a thing, but at only 5%, it's not going to help either.

Crown Valley Imperial Pumpkin Smash - As mentioned above, this one is already out.  It's a pumpkin imperial stout and it's a good one.  The problem is that it's still way too fucking hot for a 10.6% stout. My suggestion: buy a 4-pack, if you want to try one now go for it, but save the rest for when the weather gets cold. Or maybe buy another 4-pack and save a few for next year and compare to that release.

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale - This one isn't available in Louisiana, but if you make your way to Houston for the LSU-Wisconsin game or head to Florida for a late Summer beach trip you might see it on the shelves. It's typically released around September 1st, and my suggestion is to grab a pack if you see it, because they usually go fast.

Harpoon Pumpkin Cider - Yes, Harpoon makes cider.  No, I've never tried it.  I'm not even sure if we're going to get this in Baton Rouge, but I'll be trying it if we do, because I'm a pretty big fan of cider.  This is also an August release, so if I see it I will report back later, but for now my suggestion is that if you like cider, why not give it a try?

Harpoon UFO Pumpkin - Yet another August release, what sets this one apart is that it's unfiltered, and it's 5.9% which is stronger than the rest of the non-imperial pumpkin ales on this list. My suggestion: If you want a little more kick without getting into a real high-gravity beer, this is one to try.

Jolly Pumpkin La Parcela - The name of the brewery is Jolly Pumpkin, and they usually put out some really good and interesting beers, so I'd have high hopes for this one.  I haven't ever tried it, but I'll definitely grab one if I see it on shelves this year.

McAuslan St. Ambroise Pumpkin - I'm 99% sure we'll get some of this down here, I've definitely seen the McAuslan beers before.  They are out of Canada, and they do a really good Apricot beer, so I'd have high hopes for their pumpkin release as well.

New Belgium Pumpkick - Their version of a pumpkin beer is brewed with cranberry juice and lemongrass.  My suggestion: If you like sour beers, this might be the pumpkin beer for you.

Saint Arnold Pumpkinator - Yes!  This one is released every year around October 15th, which is the PERFECT time for a good pumpkin beer. Buy some, enjoy it, age it, share it. You won't be disappointed. Don't try to drink too many by yourself though, or you'll be hurting the next morning.

Sam Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale - According to their website this is not currently brewed... so... I guess I'll have to pass!

Shipyard Pumpkinhead - One of the older pumpkin beers that I can remember, this one comes out in August as well, so sometime soon! It's only 4.5%, and a traditional lighter pumpkin beer.  My suggestion: give it a try, it's not the best on this list, but not the worst either.

Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin - This is basically an imperial version of the Pumpkinhead, a little darker and a lot stronger, doubled to 9%.  It's also an August release, and I recommend grabbing a bottle or two, one for now and one for later.  This one should age pretty well.

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat - No.

Southampton Pumpkin Ale - Another one that I haven't tried, I expect it to be released in Louisiana as I've seen previous Southampton beers on the shelves.  Their Double White and Imperial Porter are both excellent, so I'll give their pumpkin ale a try for sure.

Southern Tier Pumking - They describe this one as an Imperial Pumpkin Ale, at 8.6% with an August release.  I haven't seen any in Baton Rouge yet, but they are probably coming soon as well.  I reviewed one for Feature Beer Friday! a while back, and my sentiment holds true, it's worth picking a few up but not much point in aging these, although it won't hurt anything.

Terrapin Pumpkinfest - Honestly I've never tried this one, but we will likely get some in, as we got the previous seasonal, Maggie's Farmhouse peach ale. It's a german-style brew at 6.1%, I'll probably grab a pack and give it a try.

Wasatch Pumpkin Ale - I can't find release info on this one, but it's likely to be out soon. This one is the most "pumpkin pie" of all the pumpkin beers, and only at 4%.  My suggestion: get some for your friends or family that don't really like beer, they'll probably enjoy it.  And if not, you can always cook with the rest.

Woodchuck Private Reserve Pumpkin Cider - There is no release date that I see, but this is one of their limited releases, so quantity will likely be relatively small.  It's 6.9%, so if like cider and want a little more bite than the Ace or Harpoon, find some of these.

Beer Bloggers Conference 2013 - The Awards Show! (Part 2)

Okay... time for the second installment of the Beer Bloggers Conference 2013 Awards Show!  We left off in the first installment as we arrived in Boston for the official start of the conference.  Traffic sucked, we were late, and the trade show had already begun when we arrived.  That brings us to the first award of part 2...

Best Check-In Decision Of BBC13: Myself! When a busload of people arrive simultaneously, the lines can get rather long to get checked in... so I headed straight for the desk and left Jay and Dustin to grab my bad.  Mission accomplished, we were checked in, up to the room to drop off bags and back down to the trade show in no time. 

Best Beer From The Trade Show: Sierra Nevada Hoptimum! This isn't anything new, but we STILL don't have it on the shelves here in Baton Rouge, so it was good to try some of the 2013 version finally.  Other good options included the Ovila Saison from Sierra Nevada, the 80-Acre Wheat from Boulevard, the Robust Porter from Smuttynose, and a Woodchuck Farmhouse Cider.  There were several other beers, but I had left my phone in the room to charge and didn't get a good record... it happens.  Keeping a phone charged is a real challenge at this conference.

Most Interesting News From The Trade Show: Woodchuck! I was talking to the guys from Woodchuck (yeah, it's a cider, and yeah this is a beer bloggers conference... but whatever, I like cider.) and they have plans to do some dry-hopped ciders in the near future.  I know Woodchuck isn't "craft" since they are owned by C&C Group out of Ireland, and I don't really care for their typical ciders, but the thought of a dry-hopped cider certainly has me intrigued.

Most Ghetto Location For A World Famous Brewery: Boston Beer Company! Okay, so maybe the neighborhood wasn't really as bad as it seemed, and their full production brewery is elsewhere, but the original Samuel Adams facility is in one sketchy location.  Founder Jim Koch even alluded to this in his keynote speech, apparently they would give the local riff raff beer to act as a sort of security.  Plus I bet the rent was cheap... really fairly ingenious when you think about it.

Best Intro Speech: Julie Herz! Julia (with Craftbeer.com) was back to officially open up the conference. She's a great speaker, and she knows the industry better than just about anyone. And she really respects the bloggers' role in the industry... gotta love that.


Best Reason To Give People Free Beer: Jim Koch! It turns out he doesn't like speaking to a sober audience, so there was a can of Boston Lager on everyone's chair.  Joke's on him though, we had already been drinking for hours!  Which in no way stopped everyone from enjoying a Boston Lager.

Coolest Moment Of The Conference: Utopias with Jim Koch! After the keynote speech there was food and a lot more beer... and in smaller groups we were able to go into the barrel aging room and try some of the 2012 Utopias with Boston Beer Company founder Jim Koch.  The beer was amazing, far better than I expected and a lot more smooth than I would have ever guessed.  It was rich, boozy but not overpowering, and extremely complex.  Really the only thing bad about it was the two douchebags in the corner who felt like their personal conversation was more important than the rest of us listening to Jim.  I won't name names, but if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, don't be that douchebag, and show some respect to everyone around you.  That said, it was still a pretty awesome moment.

Best Cheese - Day 2 Edition: Boston Beer Company! Seriously, we had cheese with every meal I think.  It should have been called the Beer & Cheese Conference.  

Best Sam Adams Beer Not Named Utopias: Sam Adams American Kriek!  I love a good sour and this one was really well done.  I wish I could find it locally, but so far I've struck out.

Most Beer Bloggers Crammed Into Too Small Of A Space: Stoddard's Fine Food & Ale! This place seemed really cool, had great decor, had a great vibe, and they had an array of Heavy Seas Beer on tap, but it just wasn't close to a big enough space for everyone at the conference.  If I'm ever back in Boston I'll do my best to make a return trip here for some pints and grub, but this time, we made a pretty quick exit after a few beers to make our way back to the hotel and call it a night.  It had been a long day!

Best Reason To Drink Before Noon: Because you can! Seriously, once the sessions started there was beer everywhere... people were passing bottles around the room, leaving them at the front table for whomever wanted a pour, etc.  The beer was flowing, it was 9:30 AM, and life was good.  

Most Entertaining Speaker At The Conference: Franck Evers! He's the "Global Draught Master" from Heineken, and he came to a beer bloggers conference.  Yeah, we thought that was a little weird, he thought it was a little weird, but he still is a really entertaining guy.  Just don't call him German, he doesn't appreciate that. And be sure to skim the head off of your beer, that's where hangovers come from.

Most Likely To Speak Fluent Russian, In French: Troika Brodsky! 

Best Beer At The Beer Pairing Lunch: Allagash Black! This one was paired extremely well with a Boston creme pie dessert.  The entire beer pairing lunch was excellent, thanks to the National Beer Wholesalers Association for putting it on!  

Best Beer At The Live Blogging Session: Night Shift Ever Weisse!  Wow, this is what a sour should taste like.  I had never heard of Night Shift Brewing before the conference, they are a small nanobrewery out of Everett, MA putting out some really awesome beers.  They have traditional styles, but also a sour series and even a barrel aging program.  It's really amazing what a little brewery can do in an area that's thirsty for great craft beer.

Honorable Mentions At The Live Blogging Session: Idle Hands Pandora, Thomas Hooker Old Marley Barleywine, and Rising Tide Daymark.  All of the breweries had some impressive beers with them, but these stood out the most.  

Best Red Carpet Rollout: Harpoon Brewery!  They really treated us right... a special Imperial White IPA created just for us, a tour held by one of the founders, and then a beer dinner in a private section of the massive tasting room.  They had all their taps opened up, and just kept bringing us more food.  And more food.  And then some more food.  Seriously, it was an insane amount of grub, plus all the beer we could drink.  I even snagged a nice Harpoon glass, but it broke on the trip home.  :-(

Best Cheese - Day 3 Edition: Harpoon Brewery! Seriously, it should have been called the beer & cheese conference.  

Best Beer Of The Beer Social: Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout! It was really a treat to learn that they were going to break this one out for us, and it did not disappoint.  Fantastic beer, excellent whiskey notes, and still among the best bourbon barrel stouts in existence.

Louisiana Breweries Represented At The Beer Social After-Party: Parish Brewing and Tin Roof Brewing! Thanks again for the guys at Parish and Tin Roof for donating some beer to bring and share.  All were a huge hit, especially the Parish Grand Reserve Barleywine.  It was highly anticipated and received rave reviews from the bloggers lucky enough to try some.  

Best Beer At The Beer Social After-Party: See, what had happened was, I had been drinking! I can't say for sure, I had been drinking all day and there was a lot of beer flowing. Untappd is telling me that I drank beers such as the Allagash Coolship Balaton, Wigglesworth Lord Falconer, Allagash FV13, Riverwalk Gnomad, Epic Ales Barrel Aged Huckleberry Sour, Rising Tide Polaris, Backlash Declaration, and Anchorage Arctic Saison, plus many more than didn't make it to Untappd.  It was an epic night for sure, plus I checked in to some Parish Grand Reserve... you think I would bring it all the way to Boston and not drink a little?  Ha!

Most Amazing Feat At The Entire Conference: I made it to every session!  This did not happen last year in Indianapolis, but I pulled it off this year.  Go me!  even after being up WAY past my bedtime at the after-party the night before I was up and ready to go for the 9:30 Sunday session.

Most Generous Beer Bloggers: 2BeerGuys! Sean and Ryan, two Boston area bloggers who run 2BeerGuys.com were hooking us up all conference with some awesome local brews.  They really treated us southern folk right, even giving us some Heady Topper to bring home!   If they had a good beer out at their table, all it took was a tweet to find some showing up at ours.  If the Beer Blogger Conference is ever down here, we'll have to repay the hospitality.  

Best Beer Of The Final Day Of The Beer Bloggers Conference: Cigar City Hunahpu's Imperial Stout! Gerard of Beer In Florida brought this one to share, and after his report on the state of craft beer in Florida he broke it out and poured some.  So good, if this weren't so hard to find I'd have Cigar City a lot higher on my breweries wishlist.

Crazy Stat Of The Day:  Florida has almost 100 breweries! I could only name about 5, but apparently I'm a little low.  Puts Louisiana to shame, even on a per capita basis.

Best Reason To Not Have Died From Alcohol Poisoning: More beer!  Seriously, it never stopped... there was so much beer flowing, and it was still before noon.  Somehow we all survived the conference, but Dustin, Jay, and I didn't fly out until the next morning, so we still had some time to kill in Boston.

Best Place To Watch USA Soccer In Boston: The Banshee! The beer selection wasn't impressive, but they had some awesome burgers and they had USA soccer on every screen.  We watched the Gold Cup final there and then headed back to the hotel to crash.  It had been a long fun trip and we had an early flight to catch.

Best Fiance' Ever: Mandi!  For watching the house and the dogs while I was gone, love you baby!

Thanks again to everyone who helped put the Beer Blogger Conference together!  It was a fantastic time, expertly run as always, and a great learning experience as well.  Until next time... cheers! 

One Week Until The Beer Bloggers' Conference!

I'm starting to get excited, the 2013 North American Beer Bloggers' Conference starts one week from today!  Yeah, that's an unfortunate acronym.  It's going to be a pain to type out "Beer Bloggers' Conference" the whole time, but do I dare just call it the BBC? 

Looks like we have some really fun things on tap for the Portland, Maine pre-conference excursion.  A beer & cheese pairing at Cabot Cheese with Geary's beer, a beer dinner at Sebago Brewing Company, and then a party at a place called The Thirsty Pig.  Now, I write about beer, so one thing that might not be as readily apparent is that I fucking love cheese.  Everything about it.  Starting off the trip with a beer & cheese pairing?  I'm pumped.  I've honestly never even heard of Geary's or Sebago, so I get cheese, new breweries, and then a party at what looks to be a pretty awesome beer bar?  Fuck. Yes.

After that we're going to hit up the Portsmouth Brewery / Brewpub in New Hampshire for a beer lunch on our way to Boston.  I've never been to Maine or New Hampshire, so that's two states crossed off my travel list, and even more breweries. 

From there it's Boston, where trips to the Boston Beer Company, Heavy Seas, and Harpoon Brewing await.  I've had beers from all of these breweries before but I've never been there in person... it should be awesome!  Plus all sorts of good seminars on how I can be a better beer blogger... hopefully a few of the tips stick with me this time rather than getting washed away in a sea of beer.  

And probably the best event of the weekend will be the beer social on Saturday night.  A beer social with a lot of beer bloggers?  Yeah, it's basically a massive bottle share featuring an entire county's worth of great brews.  Awesome, is what it is. Last year I tried some of the best beers I can remember... a Three Floyds Apocalypse Cow, an Alchemist Heady Topper, a Bruery Black Tuesday, and even a Westvleteren 12.  Really the only question is what beer do we bring?  

My First Official Beer Tasting! - July 26th

Alright, big news folks, I'll be running my first ever beer tasting in a couple of weeks, July 26th, at Roux Wine & Spirits in Prairieville!  The tasting will kick off at 7 PM, at a cost of $20 per person for most people, or $15 if you are a member of the Roux Wine & Spirits VIP Club.  I'll be talking everyone through an 8-beer tasting of Summer brews, including some variants that I think would make for nice Summer drinking.  

The full list includes:

• Brooklyn Summer Ale
• Harpoon Summer Ale
• Sam Adams Summer Ale
• Sierra Nevada Summerfest
• Magic Hat #9
• Full Sail LTD. 04
• NOLA Blonde
• Coney Island Albino Python

As you can see there will be four Summer seasonals from some of the big names of craft beer, plus a few that should work very well with the hot weather we've had down here so far.  I made sure to include NOLA Blonde to feature a local beer, plus the opportunity to talk about canned craft beer.  I'm excited about this tasting, and I hope many of my friends out there can come out and support me and also Roux Wine & Spirits.

Cheers!

Review: Harpoon 100 Barrel Series - Pott's Landbier & Oak Aged Dunkel

Time for a quick double-review of a couple of limited series beers from the Harpoon Brewery (@harpoon_brewery) out of Boston, MA.  These are both part of this 100 Barrel Series brews... the Pott's Landbier and Oak Aged Dunkel!  These are numbers 32 and 34 in the Harpoon 100 Barrel Series, and as far as I know they aren't avialable in Louisiana.  I've seen other Harpoon products in town, especially the popular IPA and UFO Hefeweizen, but never any of this series.  I picked up these two at Spec's in Houston... so on to the reviews:

Up first is the Pott's Landbier... a Vienna Lager styled beer that I poured from a bomber into a pint glass.  It's a deep orange color, clear with lots of bubbles and two fingers worth of frothy white head. Good retention and lacing.

It smells crisp, with just a hint of malt and hops but nothing too dominant. Kinda faint, really and unimpressive.  The flavor is better, hops are most dominant and it's a little bitter due to a lack of balance. It could really use some more malt flavor to me.

The mouthfeel is fine other than the awkward bitter aftertaste. It has great body for such a low alcohol beer.  Unfortunately the weird bitter taste keeps me from really wanting another, but it's not going to keep me from finishing this bomber easily!  A slightly above average beer, but nothing worth seeking out again before they are all gone.

 

My Rating: C+

BeerAdvocate: B

 

Lager

 

The second in line is the Oak Barrel Aged Dunkel, another European styled lager, but this one is taken the extra step of aging time in American oak barrels.   Just like the Pott's Landbier, I poured the dunkel from a bomber into a pint glass.  It's a deep red color with an off-white head, about two fingers worth.  Just like the one above this one is a good looker.

Like the Landbier, the aroma is pretty weak. I like what I'm picking up, rich dark malts, but it's just not very powerful.

The taste is far better... sweet rich malts, chocolate and toffee flavors. There was a flash of an off-metallic taste but then it was gone. Tasty, I like this one a lot... not really picking up much of the oak aging, but it's a solid dunkel.

It has a really nice mouthfeel full despite the low abv, creamy even.  Easy to drink, this one is a winner.  Clearly the better choice of the two 100 Barrel Series brews I've tried, and I think I'd pick up a few more if I saw them on the shelves.

My Rating: B+

BeerAdvocate: B

Dunkel Lager