Sam Adams Fat Jack Double Pumpkin

So I mostly purchased this one due to the ridiculous picture of a dumpy pumpkin-man on the label.  Is he Fat Jack? He sort of looks like the illustrations one might find in original copies of The Wizard of Oz, amusing yet menacing at the same time.  If you purchase Fat Jack, might he, in fact, end up drinking you?!?!

Well, he didn't, at least not before I downed all 22 oz. of him first.  Those initial sips were a little rough.  This dark ale assaults the new drinker with a bitter start, hoppy-ing down your throat.  Yet, let it linger in your mouth a moment and the smoky textures of the included spices--cinnamon, nutmeg, harvested pumpkin--create a pleasing sensation.  Fat Jack isn't so much a pumpkin beer as a nicely brewed Fall concoction, a "nestle under a fire after a cool walk through the changing leaves...but don't let Fat Jack get you at night time or he will bite your face off" kind of beer.

Finish as much as you can while cold though.  I nursed this one while doing the dishes and reorganizing some new furniture and the last few room temperature sips gagged me.  A Good buy when refrigerated.

Old Doctor Whos

Despite their incredible age and, at times, irrelevance to my modern sensibilities, I'm getting a huge kick watching the surviving episodes of the 1960s Doctor Who.  Due to a policy of taping over episodes once the BBC had determined that there was no longer any financial benefit to them, over 100 episodes of Doctor Who no longer exist.  Fortunately, thanks to off-air taping and random clips gathered from around the world, many of these older episodes at least exist in part.  Compared to the highly edited and (partially) advanced special effects of the modern, excellent Doctor Who series, these original episodes seem more like a play than a TV show.  Yet these quaint adventures with the ridiculous Daleks and giant bee monster-puppets are fun for me and my son versus the more intense modern incarnation of the good doctor.  Old doesn't always mean boring.  A Good way to spend a lazy Sunday.

Harpoon UFO Pumpkin

And the hits just keep on coming with this next pumpkin offering from Harpoon, a brand that I've never been particularly fond of.  But it's pumpkin-related so I guess I have to try it.

From the first sip, I assumed terrible things would happen as this is a very dark beer with a bitter start.  Yet, unlike most bitter beers, I actually enjoyed the rich taste and found the overall experience very refreshing.  Now, a theme of these reviews has been a need for pumpkin beer to taste, y'know, like pumpkin.  And here's where the UFO starts to falter.  By the end of the bottle I had started to get a hint of pumpkin but the overall flavor is more like a twist of pumpkin in the bottle versus a drink brewed with pumpkin.  Still, it had just enough going on to dodge an accusation of false advertising and won me over with a profile I typically avoid.  It's a Good choice for these chillier Fall days.