Mill St. Brewing Nightmare Pumpkin Ale

The best issues to comment on are always the old ones that have long since been discussed out - yeah, I'm the one commenting at the end of that two-year-old thread that hasn't had a reply in the past 700 days - so I'll being by mentioning that I haven't been drinking as much Mill St. since they were acquired by Labatt's (themselves part of the Ahneuser-Busch Inbev conglomerate). Naturally, they have every right to expand, but conversely they can't need my pittance of a drinking budget that much as part of such a large and powerful organization. I managed to keep up enough spite to avoid them entirely until West Coast IPA showed up on tap at the pub - you can't be bitter with that much hoppy goodness. Well, you can, and that's sort of the entire point, but there's no call to degenerate into wordplay here.
Politics aside (I can't help the occasional digression, damn university turned me into a hippie liberal and I never recovered), far be it for me to miss this year's run of the former Nightmare on Mill St. - it really doesn't feel like Halloween without some, from the classic copper colour (which my photos taken in the dimly lit porch with the Lady of Marmot's tablet really don't capture - in real life it's not darker than Red Racer) to the flaming jack-o'-lantern on the label, this is a Pumpkin Ale with all the capital letters. Researching this would take approximately three minutes but completely ruin my fun, but I'm going to speculate the pun-spoiling name change may be related to the very large legal department of the very large corporation that now owns Mill St. taking into consideration the copyrights of one New Line Cinemas and a certain stab-handed villain who may still be marketable yet.

A freshly poured Nightmare Pumpkin Ale has a crisp, sharp scent, with aromas of allspice, clove, and the faint sourness of yeast. Belying its relatively light body, Nightmare forms a smooth, stiff vanilla-scented head, and while the bulk dissipates quickly, flecks of foam persist well into the glass - for anyone who hasn't tried Nightmare as a beer float, this is about the best possible argument to do so: you can have more of just that part, but plus ice cream.

Regarding vanilla; while malt is of its greatest pairings, it can easily be over- or mis-applied. Too much turns the result into something European schoolchildren of the 1950s might enjoy mixed by the teaspoon into whole milk. Nightmare avoids this unfortunate scenario, with vanilla as a dusky undertone rather than the dominant taste. While the first sips bring the expected burst of allspice, the yeasty wheat-ale core of the brew is accentuated over the seasoning, with warm vanilla and the understated astringency of cinnamon and mild hop (an understated combination of Nugget and Tettnanger). The actual taste of squash is sparser, contributing more of an overall "roasted" impression than a distinct taste in its own right.

In my review of 2014*'s Nightmare on Mill St., I stressed two points in particular - that the flavour makes the (at least claimed, no brewery is above some spoooky halloween bullplop. 33!) spice blend's origins as a pumpkin pie recipe seem entirely plausible, but that an excess of flavours in seeming competition with each other resulted in something kind of overwhelming. Either their recipe of my sense of smell has become more muted in the two years since, as Nightmare Pumpkin Ale
seems now to strike a solid balance - proper seasonal flavour without ending up bottling a melt-shake (thank you, Homestar Runner, for an incredibly useful word there). Nightmare is one of the lighter selections I've tried this season, both in terms of body and the well-used but non-crushing spice, but still comes through with the expected hit of sweet fall baking.
Now that I've been spoiled on more ambitious (though occasionally unsuccessful) pumpkin IPAs and heavyweight hallowe'en porters, Nightmare doesn't stand out quite like it used to, but shows there's call for the classics.

*2015,  the Year of the Dead Groundhog, will not be discussed further. Neglecting the poor rodent for more than a year all be worth it if the worldbuilding I put all my writing time into turns into anything.