Stack Brewing Last Bite Pumpkin Porter

Stack is the hometown brewery, and I have to admit a little bit of a bias. Like pretty much everything I like about this city, Stack doesn't necessarily "do" subtle. Something about a proud history of grinding up meteorite guts by essentially building the bowels of hell on top of them, then using explosions, acid and giant metal teeth to refine the result into heavy metal, may influence its essential in the opposite direction. Subtle, as should be obvious, has never really been my thing either.

Still adorned by Rob Sacchetto's Jack-O'-Lantern zombie - a modern classic of Halloween beer artwork - Last Bite Pumpkin Porter, now in its third year of release, is in many ways a prototypical Stack beer. It packs bold flavours, unity of content and theme, and stands at the heavy end of its alcohol class while carrying it exceptionally well. This is, after all, from the same brewery that makes Stack '72, a seemingly impossible easy-drinking 9% alcohol, 82 IBU Imperial India Pale.

As porters go, Last Bite is heavy in alcohol at 6.5%, heavy in body, and certainly spiced to match. The duo of ginger and allspice is prominent from first opening the can right through to the last hints of the aftertaste. Last Bite leads with a nose-tweaking waft of sweet, dark malt and pie spices, which transitions very well into the structural earth tones. Built on dark caramel malt suggesting baking chocolate and molasses, along with the health-food-store-air pong of ginger and a slight hint of sugary roasted-vegetable char come together in an off-dry whole (having aperceptible sweetness, but almost surprisingly dry for a dark pumpkin-spice offering).

Unlike some of its contemporaries - particularly Highballer from Grand River and Lake of Bays' Brewing's Wild North Pumpkin Ale - Last Bite is unabashedly a one-and-done beer. Named, the label recounts, after the final bite of pumpkin pie, a glass is fittingly a singular experience, not well suited to seconds. There's a filling finality to reaching the end of a pint, and it really does feel like the conclusion of an indulgence - one which has already passed the point where it will ultimately lead to regret, also the point at which true satisfaction is achieved.