Today's beer is America's Original Pumpkin Ale made by Buffalo Bill's Brewery. Lets dive right in.
Location: Hayward, CA
Manufacturer's Description: Ale brewed with real pumpkin and natural spice flavor.
ABV: 5.2%
Out of the bottle the beer poured very cloudy and the color was almost identical to homemade pumpkin pie, which was neat to see and got me excited for the tasting to come. There was a thick, white, three-finger head which was light gold in color. There were big fluffy bubbles, but they faded quickly which made me sad. I really like nice thick, big, bubbly heads on beers - it reminds me of the beer you always see cartoon characters drink where the head seems to be as dense as shampoo lather or whipped cream.
The nose on this brew was incredible - on my notes I have written "pumpkin fucking pie" which was appropriate. Imagine you're at your aunt's house on Thanksgiving and she opens the door to the oven to check on her pie. That exact scent (minus the heat obviously) is what was coming off of this beer. All your favorite players were present: clove, cinnamon, allspice and any other warm winter spice you can think of. Very nice. I detected almost no hop, yeast, or malt character in the nose... it smelled like pumpkin fucking pie.
The pallet is really pretty lame however. When you get some in your mouth there is absolutely zero pumpkin spice flavor, no yeast, and very little malt. It was like someone dumped pumpkin pie spice into a PBR, and as a goddamn joke gave it to me. The only thing remarkable about how the beer tasted was how unremarkable the beer tasted. There is some small amount of a cidery finish to the beer which I admit was very pleasant but not what I wanted at all. There was also a trace amount of the pumpkin spices in the end if you kind of did that smacking-your-mouth-thing-over-and-over to bring it out.
I'm a big fan of seasonal beers but I need them to live up to what they promise. If you are making a pumpkin or pumpkin spice beer, then I basically want to be drinking pumpkin pie juice with alcohol added for me. This was more as if it offered 1000 dollars up front, then came back a few weeks later, hat in hand, telling me all it could scare up was 376 dollars, and that it's sorry but it will have the rest next week. I kind of felt like breaking the knees of this beer just to teach it a lesson.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was surprised at how mediocre this beer was. I had the same thoughts as you regarding the taste, especially after the aroma mislead me to think I was going to taste something that actually resembled a pumpkin ale.
ReplyDeleteI tasted this about 2 years ago, and can safely say that I will not be purchasing this again in the foreseeable future. I'm actually quite surprised that this beer is still being sold with the amount of quality fall/spiced/pumpkin ales that are being made today. In fact, I still scoff at this beer when I see it in the beer aisle, remembering how disappointed I was by it.
"America's Original Pumpkin Ale," PFFT.
- Macks
I think the biggest thing this beer has going for it is the fact that you can find it at fred meyers and safeway and the like. you don't have to make a specialty trip to the beer store, being owned by InBev does a lot for your ability to acquire shelf space.
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