Additional Beers Toast Traditional Fears

Update the Fourth: Black Creek Historic Brewery Pumpkin Ale and Great Lakes Beer...Pumpkin Ale

Halloween Fun Fact: If you chase Ringolos with stale Growers Pumpkin Spice, it tastes like trying to salvage cold McDonalds' fries with too much ketchup.

Late entries just keep appearing, forcing me to savour yet more delicious pumpkin beer, and now to attend happy hour at the pub, to boot! This blogging stuff is demanding. In addition to Steam Works Pumpkin Ale's out-of-nowhere late-season arrival, a draft-only beer has debuted from Muskoka (my old hogging grounds) based Lake of Bays Brewing - Mash 'n Pumpkins. Like every year, I'll be glad when November comes and we're rid of this awful wordplay and all of its pun kin. I've also been made aware of Amsterdam Brewing Company's Gaslight pumpkin ale, but it has yet to make an appearance - tonight I'll be sampling their other fall offering, Autumn Hop (an uncommon fresh-hopped beer) though that is strictly for personal enjoyment and has no place in a pumpkin beer review.

Black Creek's Pumpkin Ale was one of the first to arrive this year and only the second I tried pre-review, after Citrouille. In retrospect, the first bottle may have been a dud - while the flavour and aroma matched up between tests, the first was almost completely flat. Remembering this as a less-than-sparkling ale from last season, I was ready to assume that Black Creek's pioneer-style brewing methods predated modern carbonation. While it loses its head after a few seconds, this glass was sharply carbonated, with a seltzer-like (though less so) tongue-stinging sensation when held in the mouth. A third one is going to be required to determine whether the flat sample was a fluke or if there's some inconsistent quality control happening. That it's appealing enough, despite the flawed bottle, to go back for thirds in the middle of an extensive (and expensive) pumpkin beer rampage definitely says something positive for the flavour.

This is another coppery ale, faintly cloudy and slightly more orange than the others. In colour and taste, Black Creek gives the strongest impression of actual pumpkin out of all subjects so far. When poured, it releases an aroma - perceivable before hoisting the glass - of cooked squash with a hint of spice, the reverse of its contemporaries. It has an unexpected richness for a medium-bodied ale, and particularly after another sample of Growers (now tasting unsettlingly like a cinnamon-scented doll's head) it has bittersweet characteristics that really do seem more similar to brewed pumpkin than purely malt. It's not even particularly spicy, with only hints of cinnamon and nutmeg. It's still no squash shandy - again, I contend this would be less than desirable even on Halloween its very self - but it's the one I could most likely identify as a pumpkin ale in a blind taste test.

In appropriately oldey-timey fashion, the label consists of a single, giant pumpkin, looking faintly luminescent against a dark background - autumnal, even implying All Hallow's Eve, but with no zombies or Draculas to upset delicate sensibilities and remind villagers of the looming ever-presence of deaaaaaath. The humble monicker of Pumpkin Ale suits it well. It's ale, it has pumpkin, and there's no sense putting the fear of divine wrath into simple folk (and risking regular old wrath, of the pitchforks and torches variety, from them) by calling it "Captain Atheism's Wretched Ghoul Blood" or "Old Skeleton". I have to give credit where credit is due, this beer establishes a character and stays in it. Black Creek seems to have a thing going on with that over there.

Next is another that's been making the rounds for a few years now, Great Lakes' Pumpkin Ale. Visually, this is a very satisfying beer. It has a really nice pour with a firm, foamy head, and is the lightest in colour of all sampled so far, only a shade darker than the now-notorious Growers Pumpkin Spice. Also, the cap is foiled, which I'm a complete sucker for. It just looks so fancy. The label is, well, a big Jack-O-Lantern and "Pumpkin Ale" in a huge font. You have to respect their directness, but it seems a little uninspired with the competition sporting towering pumpkin zombies, possible ghost trains, or at the very least pumpkins on FIRE. But I suppose that's fair enough - this is a beer that looks like Halloween but tastes more like late August or possibly Christmas morning. The jack-o'-lantern is a step above plain pumpkins, and specifically suggests "Halloween" over the more general "Autumn", but its 'ween-ness is as understated artistically as in flavour. It makes sense for pioneer-themed beer, here it falls a little flat.

The Chalice of Tragedy, ever-present and filled to the brim, now emits an aroma I can only compare to a theoretical apple-cinnamon scented-candle-scented air freshener. Drinking it made the back of my tongue pucker, which is actually a pretty odd sensation. Thanks to the aforementioned surprise late entries, I may run out of Growers before I run out of pumpkin beers to try, which would probably for the best. It's really granting the beers tasted with it an unfair advantage now - after this nonsense, the surprisingly crisp and distinctly orangey flavour actually refreshed my palate, a rare occasion indeed for sometimes cloying-in-its-own-right pumpkin spice beer.

Fizzy, foamy and surprisingly light, this pumpkin ale is pulling off a passable impression of a spiced Wit. When cracked, it releases a strong scent of orange peel, backed with a hint of nutmeg. The brew includes (uniquely) sweet potato, though neither it nor pumpkin are particularly evident in the taste. The most prominent characteristics are pronounced sweetness, orange-peel hops and an otherwise-soft spice blend that delivers a noticeable hit of clove. Great Lakes Pumpkin Ale is light-bodied for a harvest brew; the LCBO classifies it as Medium, but it's definitely at the lower end of its weight class. Despite the sweetness, it's something I wouldn't object to multiple glasses of, where many pumpkin beers are more like a pint of dessert - rich, satisfying, and by the time you're done you'd never consider seconds.