6

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5

Draught at the brewery, 11/2/18.
Tan-beige-orange colored body shows good clarity and a butter-colored head atop of low-to-moderate retention.
Spice is fairly strong, certainly very evident, in the nose. Earth, vanilla, brown bread and light honey comprise the malt character and I'm not getting any hint of smoked malt promised from the commercial description. Clean and with no alcohol, but the spice is rather big.
In the mouth it's definitely overdone with the spice. Or at least too spice-forward for me. Not quite astringent and there is a good attempt at balance from the fairly sweet base malt honey-like character (with caramel mixing in due to specialty malt), but it's just another cinnamon-nutmeg-clove beer. It would have been so cool if they had done a smoked malt beer with a hint of spice, instead of the reverse that they've done here. But alas, the masses demand heavily spiced "pumpkin" beers, I guess.