Funky Pumpkin

Location: 12 oz bottle from Sparrow - Downtown, 9/25/15

Aroma: The nose is pumpkin spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc., with some caramel, toffee, and earth
Appearance: Pours a clear orange color with a slightly fizzy, tan head and light lace
Flavor: The taste is pumpkin spice / malty sweetness with a light-medium tart / sourness
Palate: Medium body, leaning light, with average carbonation, a clean feel, finishes tart, light dry
Overall Impression: This is a pretty nice one. I really enjoyed how the sourness played with an otherwise fairly standard pumpkin spice beer flavors. Nice idea. I can't recall any other similar beers off the top of my head, but I enjoyed this one, and I think I'll enjoy a few more of these this fall. It's a nice variation on the standard pumpkin spice beers everyone else is making these days.

Fall 2015 release bottle, drunk 9/17/15.
Clear light golden liquid has a slight amber tint and a small off-white head that fizzles away rapidly to cover.
Cinnamon, lactic acid and light citrus in the nose are all a bit disharmonious, though a bit of maltiness peeks through, softening things a bit and adding a bit of bread and light caramel. Ginger and brett lingering on in the finish with no alcohol noted.
Quite tart and acidic up front softening somewhat with the maltiness emerging through the middle. But it’s got a lot of sharp, spicy elements that, I think, clash with the brett notes and despite the moderate maltiness, really push this thing too far in the spicy/dry/sour camp. Fizzy, unfocused carbonation brings more wateriness to light than is desirable, further exacerbating things and lactic acid and spice linger on the finish. Vanilla, cinnamon, sticky toffee notes as an afterthought. Fun idea, but I don’t think it works all that well, despite not being a disaster.

Sampled from the bottle at ABR 2015. Pours a clear gold with a white head that dissipates to the edges. Aroma has a good amount of pumpkin spice with some light grains and a hint of funk supporting. Flavor has notes of light pumpkin spice, pumpkin, grain and a bit of straw underlying.

Draught @ Albion. Hazy copper-orange with virtually no head, faint pumpkin aroma, high carbonation, sour acidic taste, medium tart finish. Nice tart beer but the pumpkin component is not really stong.

Pours a honey color from a bottle. Sour smell, some pumpkin aroma and flavor, lots of allspice, not getting much of anything else. Nice sourness. Good beer.

Bottle - first, I’ve got to give props to Boulevard for making a (partially) barrel-aged Brett beer and selling it in reasonably-priced six packs - this is a pretty approachable and decent spiced sour - lightly sour nose, with moderate nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger - some baked apple - flavor tastes a bit like a dry, spiced cider - moderate tartness, tart apple, white grape - fairly frothy texture - interesting beer.

Bottle: Pours clear, slightly ambered-gold with a whipped, off-white head. Pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg scent. Taste is bright and tart, pumpkin, apple....pie spice and a little crust. Pretty good....a nicely different take on the pumpkin genre.

Shaker on draft, hazy orange color. The first thing I realized upon sipping the beer is that I am not the biggest fan of spice heavy beers pretending to have pumpkin in them. The spices are strong with this one. Unfortunately, the light tartness, while refreshing, only makes the over-spicing slightly more tolerable. If I had to drink a spice-fake-pumpkin beer then this would be the weiner. But I probably won’t want to drink this again. 7/3/7/3/13

I thought I would give this beer another shot, didn’t want to completely write if off after one batch. Well, I am glad I did. This years batch is much nicer. Why? Because its lost a great deal of tall that fake pumpkin spice. Oh, and the tartness and wild effervescence (can’t say its brett) is amped up. The aroma has a light, mild dry spice. But the flavor is all clear tartness with a medium-light amber body. Really nice, might pick up another one of these now.