9.4% ABV, 42 IBU
Dan: 3.5 Daniel: 3.5 Philip: 3.75 Average: 3.58
Some companies overdo cinnamon. Double Barley overdoes vanilla like I overdo video games. "It's 3:44 AM, are you coming to bed?" "Do you even see how many clickers I'm fighting right now? I can't possibly go to bed!" Gourd Rocker has more vanilla flavor than Thrilla in Vanilla. Seriously. There isn't much complexity past the vanilla. We wish they'd cut down on the vanilla and up the pumkpin flavor. It's a tasty beer, but it's dominated by vanilla. We all agreed on this one and weren't suprised to learn that the beer we were drinking was Double Barley. That said, I'd happily drink it again.
9) Wicked Weed (Asheville, NC) - Xibalba
8.2% ABV, 22 IBU
Dan: 3.75 Daniel: 4 Philip: 3.25 Average: 3.67
Unlike Gourd Rocker with one predominant flavor, Xibalba is bursting with many. The most immediate flavor to jump to mind when drinking Xibalba is chili. It's got chili peppers, cacao nibs, and many other spices. That masks the pumpkin flavor a good bit, as the chilis are certainly more prominent. This is a quite interesting drink. We all agreed it was good, but I can see how the faint of heart may not love the pumpkin+spice+chili combination.
It should also be said that Sean poured three beers for us (under the understanding that he'd pour us secretly one beer), and Sean proceeded to pour us three different beers. It was certainly confusing when Daniel sipped his Xibalba and commented on the heavy chili. We also had a He Said Baltic Porter and a Crown Valley. They tasted nothing alike. :) Thanks Sean. You're fired.
7 (tie)) 21st Amendment (San Francisco, CA) and Elysian (Seattle, WA) collaboration - He Said Belgian Tripel
8.2% ABV, unknown IBU
Dan: 3.5 Daniel: 4 Philip: 3.75 Average: 3.75
We didn't rate pumpkin on this beer. It's honestly a small part of the flavor profile, but it's detectable. Looking back it'd probably get a 1.5. This was really good on its own as a Tripel. It's got great and not overbearing notes of clove-like esters and a tasty sweet malt body. Really, that's what a pumpkin beer should be. A good beer for its style that also has pumpkin. Too many times we tried an awful beer that was propped up with pumpkin or cinnamon. For a pumpkin beer to be good, the quality of the beer itself must first be good. Some companies strive for novelty in lieu of making a good product. Michael Bay strives for explosions in lieu of a good movie. Don't be like Michael Bay, brewers.
7 (tie)) Heavy Seas (Halethorpe, MD) - Great'er Pumpkin Bourbon Barrel Aged
10% ABV, unknown IBU
Dan: 3.5 Daniel: 4 Philip: 3.75 Average: 3.75
This beer was delicious! The aroma was amazing. It tasted a bit different from how it smelled. This beer had an appropriate spice profile. Definitely more pumpkin pie spice variety than straight pumpkin. I think a lot of high alcohol beers do this to enhance the sweetness and balance the otherwise booziness of a high alcohol product. You can see how the alcohol bite and bitterness were both tiny for a 10% beer, and I would add it was too small. We couldn't tell that the beer was bourbon barrel aged, actually. It made sense when we revealed what we were drinking, but the bourbon quality was really in the background on this one. I would rather it be stronger. She's a sneaky one!
6) Southern Tier (Lakewood, NY) - Warlock 2015
10% ABV, unknown IBU
Dan: 3.75 Daniel: 3.75 Philip: 4 Average: 3.83
Oh Warlock. If you don't know, Warlock is one of the great controversies in craft brewing. Warlock is to beer as Ronald Reagan is to America. Some people love Warlock. Some people think Warlock is pure evil: a complete travesty to brewing. More than anything, Warlock is cool to hate, kind of like how 20- and 30-something males all said how the Backstreet Boys were terrible, but we might have also secretly enjoyed singing along to I Want It That Away. Untappd raters give Warlock a 4.0 average, but that means nothing, as Wild Blue earns a 3.1 and is the second worst beer I've ever tasted. I would honestly rather drink Dimetapp. I say tasted because it was poured out after a single taste, and the taste did not go down my esophagus. Don't ask me what my worst beer was. And believe it or not, it is not Corona. Corona is a distant #3 (worse than Cheshire's, yes).
More back story: Warlock (probably in response to beer elitist criticism) changed their recipe from 2014 to 2015. The alcohol went from 8.6 to 10%, the booziness went way up and the sweetness was toned down. Compare the graphs above and below and you can see that 2015 is drier, more bitter, less pumpkin, a bit less complex malty, and a touch hoppier. Which is better? Dan and Philip preferred 2014, Daniel preferred 2015, though we liked both quite a bit. We blind taste tested these together, and did them a test where one of us said they poured 2 of one year and 1 of the other. We immediately identified that they were all 2015s. You can tell so easily which is which; they are quite different. We did afterwards compare them side by side.
So 2015 is the more alcoholic cousin (both in feel and in ABV). It's less sweet, more punchy. It's not that dry for its high ABV, though it is still dry. The flavor profile here is lovely; it's quite malty and quite complex. The body is a bit light, and the mouthfeel is very pleasant. It sits in the mouth really nicely and the alcohol slowly comes off the tongue. This is a wonderful beer and we loved drinking it.
3 (3-way tie)) Southern Tier (Lakewood, NY) - Warlock 2014
8.5% ABV, 20 IBU
Dan: 4 Daniel: 3.5 Philip: 4.5 Average: 4.00
The still alcoholic but noticeably less boozy cousin, Warlock 2014 is like a much better version of Gourd Rocker. The vanilla flavor is there, but it's muted by comparison. It's really not muted, it's just less IN YOUR FACE. There is a small raisin quality which pulled me away slightly, but it's less present than in Crown Valley's SMASH offering. Warlock 2014 is like a spiced baltic porter. It's big and sweet, and it's full of pumpkin pie spice flavors. The aroma is quite heavenly. The malt body is lovely. It may be too sweet for some, but it's not criminally sweet as half the beers on this list. I don't know if we'll see this again, as Southern Tier 2016 looks to be the same as 2015. Good night, sweet warlock.
3 (3-way tie)) Arcane Manor (Dan's kitchen, Raleigh, NC) - Stingy Jack
11.3% ABV, 77 IBU
Dan: 3.5 Daniel: 4 Philip: 4.5 Average: 4.00
So we did a blind taste test, right? Well some beers stick out very obviously at first try. Stingy Jack was a beer that the three taste testers brewed together. We know what it tastes and smells like as we were there when it grew up. We took it to its first mash tun and we fed it spoonfuls (or 18 pounds) of malted barley. We bathed it in warm water (we called it sparging at the time) and extracted its tasty sugars and proteins. We boiled it and we bottled it. So when we blind taste tested Stingy Jack, we immediately knew what we were drinking. We tried to be unbiased, but that's impossible when it's your baby.
Stingy Jack is the most alcoholic thing on this list, clocking in at 11.3%. It's also the most hopped beer on the list, even more than The Gourd Standard. That said, with an ABV over twice that of TGS, it doesn't taste as hoppy. We made it so hoppy to balance the crazy high maltiness. The bigest and baddest facet of Stingy Jack is its booziness. The alcohol is present right at the start, not in the background. It starts with booze and fades to complex malts and pumpkin with a super long linger (20 seconds or so). It's a beer meant to be sipped, and sipped slowly. The malts jump out more and the beer "mellows" as it warms. It gets more complex and flavorful with warmth. One of us (I blame Daniel) said when rating for matiness "I give it a bagel in that I'm eating a bagel". Well done, very funny, young Daniel. I might have also said that. So, yeah. Although it's an alcohol forward beverage, it's got a lovely malt linger that makes us really enjoy this beer. Just check out how high this beer rates in a lot of categories that rarely exceeded a 2.5: alcohol, malty, burnt, bitter, dry, body, linger. Credit to Stefanie for making the awesome tulip glass and taking this photo.
3 (3-way tie)) Anderson Valley Brewing Company (Boonville, CA) - Pinchy Jeek Barl
8.5% ABV, 20 IBU
Dan: 3 Daniel: 4.5 Philip: 4.5 Average: 4.00
We liked this better than Heavy Seas' bourbon barrel aged pumpkin ale. Pinchy Jeek, despite being less alcoholic than Great'er Pumpkin, comes off as more complex, more alcoholic, more bitter, more bourbon-y, and less sweet. For these reasons we liked it better. We really enjoyed the color and head on this beer. The pumpkin was really apparent in this one, deliciously so. In this beer, Dan rated it a bit lower than us and was surprised to see it was Pinchy Jeek, as he's said he loved this beer. This goes to show I think the validity of the blind drinking approach, as most of the time we weren't biased going into the tasting and expecting the beer to be something else.
2) Big Boss (Raleigh, NC) - Harvest Time
5.5% ABV, 16 IBU
Dan: 4.25 Daniel: 4.5 Philip: 4.5 Average: 4.42
Part of the reason we did this test was to determine if Harvest Time is the best NC-made pumpkin beer. It is.
Holy smokes we all loved this beer. We also believe that the recipe or production of this beer has changed year to year, as in some years we haven't enjoyed Harvest Time as much as others. However, we could just be dumb. This was the 2015 product we reviewed. It's not a session ale (that's under 5%), but it's close. This beer is just well made, period. It's on the pumpkin pie spice side (one small complaint from one of us was he'd prefer a touch more pumpkin than pumpkin pie), but it's spiciness is reserved. It's malt-forward for sure, and a delicious maltiness at that. What makes Harvest Time elite is its spiciness, pumpkin character, maltiness, and hops compliment each other really well. It comes together so perfectly. In a word, this beer is tasty. There is a subtle vanilla linger. This beer is hugely drinkable, so I recommend drinking it. It's a beer I would love to buy a 12 pack of, and this is from a guy who only buys 12 packs if they're variety packs (except that one time I bought Founder's Centennial IPA... yum).
1) Southern Tier (Lakewood, NY) - Pumking
8.6% ABV, 30 IBU
Dan: 4.5 Daniel: 4.75 Philip: 4.5 Average: 4.58
This was the only beer to get better than a 4.5 rating from any of us, and the only beer we all agreed was excellent, better than 4.5. Pumking is sublime. It's rather alcoholic, and it comes off as more boozy than Warlock, which I like. It's got a consistently good linger as the beer is drank and as it warms. There is a surprising hopiness, a bit more so than 2014 Warlock. That said, most of the bitter component was from alcohol more than hops. It's a nice, complimentary hop character. There is a touch of a cloying sweetness (the Dans gave it a 4.5 on sweetness, Philip gave it a 3). Best of all, the body of this beer was so, so good. There are a lot of flavors to come out, and I think they come out in a tastier way than Xibalba. Appropriately, we all agreed that Pumking is the king of pumpkin beers.
What else should we try? Please comment with agreements, disagreements, and other beers to try again or try for the first time. Thanks for reading, friends. Cheers!
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