Beer. It’s in the title of my website. And I love to share the experience of discovering a new beer with my friends whenever I can. However it is an experience my wife rarely joins me in, as her taste in beer is quite narrow. So, imagine my delight when, while browsing the shelves of our local Lizardville, she pointed out a can for a style of beer I knew was far outside her usual tastes.
“You want to try that?” I asked, “Have you had a pumpkin beer before? I don’t care for them much myself.”
“No,” she gestured again at the label “The artwork caught my eye. It looks cool, and you know I’m discovering my witchy side.”
I scanned the can with a more appraising look. She had a point. The design on the can featured an eye made up of a number of flowering symbols entwining together. The entire label was painted in stark orange on black. “T’witchy” it proclaimed. “9.25% ABV”. I gave an appreciative whistle. As my wife moved away, a very specific ingredient included in the brew caught my eye.
You know what else I love? A good prank. I picked up the can. Not only was I resolved to review it, but I was going to ask my wife to join me in the sampling. But I couldn’t just throw her into the deepest waters of craft brewing. No, I needed something to contrast it against. I wanted her to see a negative before I provided her with a positive, to paraphrase Dr. Eldon Tyrell. I glanced at the other pumpkin beers lining the shelves and grabbed one which appeared to be an innocuous example of the style. I’d be lying if I said its name didn’t play into my decision. “Haunted Hayride” was its name.
“Beer and monsters, indeed,” I smirked.
It would be several weeks before I found the time to crack open the beers. Not until Halloween night, in fact. As Betty and I settled in to celebrate our favorite holiday by listening to horror-themed podcasts, I proposed that we review the beers at the same time. Luckily, she was game (else this blog post wouldn’t have happened). So I hustled into the kitchen for the first beer.
Pumpkin One: Haunted Hayride Pumpkin Ale by Masthead Brewing Co.
Haunted Hayride is brewed by Masthead Brewing Co. up in Cleveland, Ohio. Even though its ABV was a tad on the high side at 7.3%, I decided to serve it in a traditional pint glass. If I’m honest, the decision was also driven by the fact that I only had two clean tulip glasses, and I knew I wanted to reserve those for round two.
As I poured the beer into the glasses, it rolled around in a cloudy amber swirl. It rose up and I couldn’t help but be reminded of apple cider. A thick and borderline creamy head capped the top of the ale. When I asked Betty to give me her description of the brew, she demurred.
“I’m not good at this!”
I assured her she’d do fine. “Just describe it. What do you see?”
She shrugged. “Very amber. Dark. Rich?”
I nodded in agreement. Next I asked her to smell it.
When I rose the glass to my nose and inhaled, it was as if the beer stood up in the glass and said, “Yep. I’m a pumpkin beer!” A melange of nutmeg, ginger, and a touch of cinnamon lay on top of a subtle whiff of something vegetable.
“A little bit… caramel-ly?” Betty said.
I didn’t think I made face, but my wife’s reaction to her description said otherwise.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I insisted.
“That’s what I smell.”
“OK. Perfectly valid.”
Eager to move on, I raised my glass to her. “Happy Halloween!”
She clinked her pint against mine. “Happy Halloween!”
We drank. To me, it tasted more like a Christmas beer than the pumpkin beers I had tasted in the past. The flavor was heavy with spices up front. Everything I had picked up on in the nose was there in my mouth. The spices mixed with the carbonation and engaged my senses. Swallowing, a nice sweetness of caramel followed up in the back end. Overall, the mouthfeel was balanced, and not cloying nor thick. And, as expected, there was no discernible hop flavor, yet neither was there much which spoke of pumpkin.
“It doesn’t taste bad,” was Betty’s assessment.
On that we agreed. It wasn’t bad at all. But it just didn’t seem like a pumpkin ale to me. Would that make it a Thanksgiving beer, then?
Pumpkin Two: T’Witchy by R.Shea Brewing
I ask that you take a moment to review the photograph I took of “Twitchy”. Can you spot my mistake? No. Not the habanero. That’s what I spotted in Lizardville that made me cackle inside. No, what I had missed completely is that Twitchy is not a pumpkin beer. At all. It’s an imperial stout. It says right on the damn can, “Imperial stout aged on pumpkin pie spice coffee beans and habanero”. Yet it wasn’t until I poured the beer into the tulip glasses and observed that it clearly was not amber that I realized my mistake. Whoops.
So. Not a pumpkin beer. Instead of the dark brown and orange I had been expecting it was a thick, muddy brown, bordering on black. Only a tiny bit of head ringed the edge of the glass. It, however, did have a slight orange hue to it.
“Wow,” said Betty. “It looks like coffee.”
Please don’t misunderstand me. I do love imperial stouts. But I kinda have to be expecting an imperial stout before I drink it. Tentatively, I smelled the dark concoction. The earthy aroma of strong, black coffee slapped me in my nose.
Betty pulled her own glass away from her face. “It’s a very deep, deep, dark smell.”
I nodded. Yet underneath that dense blanket of coffee something undefinable lingered. It was unlike any other stout I had every smelt before. (Going Lovecraftian in my descriptions seems appropriate for a strange beer consumed on Halloween).
“Happy Halloween,” we said as we toasted each other once again.
I fully expected Twitchy to be another taste bud train wreck like the Stone Crime I reviewed so many years ago. Yet, it was not the taste of burning in my glass but rather, surprise, black coffee. Betty and I continued sipping.
“It’s very coffee,” she said.
“Very. Yet there is something that is not quite coffee there, too.”
“But mostly coffee.”
A short while later that otherness began to tingle at the fringes of my tongue. “Love, you may want to slow down. I think I’m starting to pick up on the habanero.”
Thankfully, my caution was not warranted. The spicy sensation did not raise any higher beyond those initial tingles. However, Betty did feel it became a bit cloying as she drank more. I found the mouthfeel to be a little on the thin side for an imperial stout, but not to the point where it detracted from the unique experience the beer provided.
As we cozied up for our spooky listening, Betty cocked her head to the side. She set her glass down beside mine. “It’s not bad,” she said. “Not terrible.”
And so it was that our Halloween night featured plenty of beer, but not much in the way of a monster.