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.

Shipyard Pumpkinhead

Here is the be-all, end-all pumpkin beer of the season.  I first tasted this Amazing product way back on my honeymoon during a trip to Salem, MA.  As then, the sweet taste of pumpkin inundated every sip of this light, refreshing beer.  If you have the chance to get one in a glass with sugar on the rim, you are in for a Fall treat that you won't soon forget.  I've enjoyed a lot of the pumpkin beers I've tried this year, but this remains my favorite.

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.

Harpoon Pumpkin Cider

I love pumpkin flavors and I love cider. So, put together we should get an exponential growth in the deliciousness factor, right?

Nope! After my first sip of Harpoon Pumpkin Cider, my smile turned to a grimace. Letting out an audible groan, my wife asked, "So, did you like it?" "It's awful," I said, passing it to her as if she would be thankful of the favor following my ringing endorsement. For the first time in my life, I foisted a cider onto another.

Frankly, and it pains me to say this, the beer is so cloyingly sweet that I have a hard time not gagging. When I tried it later I focused on the pumpkin versus cider flavors. When separating these out, the beer becomes an interesting exercise in flavor profiling. In that regard it actually tastes better drunk slowly and thoughtfully. But, please, don't try to pound this Meh concoction for fear of swearing off pumpkin forever.

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin

For my mom's birthday, my wife, the original pumpkin beer lover, picked up a six-pack of Blue Moon's pumpkin offering.  As a relatively wussy beer drinker, I found this entry to be a bit too rich for my blood with a pretty bitter aftertaste.  The bigger problem: only a slight hint of pumpkin.  Why are so many beers claiming pumpkin taste then burying the lead with other bold flavors? If I wanted Mega-Hoppy Dark beer, that's what I'd be buying.  I left this one on the table for a while and, when I returned to sip my warm beer, I found that some of the intensity had vanished and the overall taste markedly improved.  So, an overall OK experience.

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat beer

As part of any fall celebration comes seasonal foods. And what's more seasonal now than pumpkin? And what's more fun to review than beer?

Pumpkin beer tasting dates back to more than 6 years ago when, on a trip to Salem, my future wife and I ordered a pumpkin beer. She was blown away by the flavor and, since then, doesn't miss a chance to order one. In honor of her preference and the onrushing Fall-ellujah tour, I figured why not document the currently available pumpkin brews?

Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat was actually our third such purchase, though the first that I've written up for the site. I've been a big fan of Shock Top beer for some time and was very excited to give this a try...and then I wasn't.

Though the beer itself is fine, it contains a very weak pumpkin flavor, more an afterthought than a main ingredient. Kind of like when someone offers you a refreshing lime seltzer and you get excited that you're about to imbibe something akin to Sprite, but, no, it's just seltzer and, oh yeah, a whiff of lime.

The beer itself has a nice, clean taste though is a bit darker than some of the other Shock Top wheats I've had. It wasn't bad but failed to capture a fall memory, i.e., OK.