The Rack is Full

As we inch ever so closer to the time that the winter brews will be hitting the market, I think that it's a decent time to express my thoughts on the crop of pumpkin beers that some of us stocked up on and might have even devoured by now.

If I'll take one thing from this year's pumpkin brews it's that spices seemed to be the dominate aspect in just about each of the pumpkin seasonals this year. More often than not, this morphed into the form of a complaint as I tried more and more of them. Less pumpkin and quite a lot of spice.

Was it because the possible lack of actual pumpkins when some of these beers were made? I've addressed the possibility of using frozen or preserved pumpkin in a post in the beginning of the year. I don't feel like looking for it out of fear of getting worked up because something tells me it could have been posted in the summer. If you remember correctly, that's when a good number of these pumpkin beers actually hit the shelves.

Cisco's Pumple Drumkin. Spice heavy, but this year was my first try.

I understand that some recipes call for a hefty dosage of spices. Still, I just felt like an abnormal number of pumpkin beers this year were unusually dominated by some of those flavors. This year was very unlike those in the past. Is this a direct result of rushing a product to the demanding public? The timing of it all?

If everything goes as planned, I should be at one of my favorite local Pittsburgh pubs that's putting a few pumpkin beers on cask this evening. One of which is Southern Tier's Pumking (which tasted just fine this year) and East End Brewing's Nunkin. A beer brewed with just about everything but the pumpkin. I'd be perfectly fine with being smacked in the face with spices while drinking that one. After all, isn't the the entire purpose of the beer?