Love them, hate them or don’t feel strongly about them, pumpkin beers are back again. This year, BeerWhere took a long, hard taste of the pumpkin offerings from brewers in our home state of North Carolina. According to a North Carolina State University report, North Carolina is the largest producer of pumpkins on the East Coast and fourth in the nation, so we have to do something with all these big orange gourds.
Some are looking for a beverage that tastes like beer but with the subtle flavors of the harvest (embodied by pumpkin) and the spices associated with fall and pumpkin pie (usually cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cloves). Others are looking for liquid pumpkin pie, something that combines pumpkin and spices with the sweetness and bready flavors of the crust and baking.
For brewers, it’s a chance to show off their skills by providing their take on on a trend that some might say has become cliché. But like most clichés, pumpkin and pumpkin spice flavors are well loved so let’s see what the brewers of the Old North State have cooked up.
Big Boss Harvest Time Pumpkin Ale
- Can you taste pumpkin? YES
- Can you taste fall spices? YES
- Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
- Does it taste like beer? YES
Up first is Big Boss Brewing Company, no newcomer to the pumpkin beer game with their Harvest Time Pumpkin Ale. They’ve been brewing Harvest Time for more than a decade.
Harvest Time pours a lovely dark orange and forms a white, frothy head that doesn’t hang around very long. The taste of fresh pumpkin and spices like cinnamon are obvious, but there’s nothing sweet or pie-like about this beer. It is a smooth as honey with a great mouthfeel and finish, and the 5.5% alcohol content is just high enough to knock the chill off an autumn evening.
NoDa Gordgeous Pumpkin Ale
-
Can you taste pumpkin? NO
-
Can you taste fall spices? YES
-
Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
-
Does it taste like beer? NO
Gordgeous Pumpkin Ale from NoDa Brewing in Charlotte is smooth, sweetish and syrupy. The focus seems to be on showcasing a large number of fall spices, but their various and strong flavors mask any pumpkin taste. Regrettably, there’s not much beer taste, either.
Gordgeous is a pretty pour. The beer is the caramel orange color you will often see with these beers. The head is thin and bubbly and doesn’t hang around long. You do smell pumpkin as it pours out of the can, but in the glass, the odor and taste is dominated by spice flavors, such as cloves, nutmeg and allspice. Cinnamon is often prominent in these beers but not in this one, so that’s different. Overall, the spices drown out the malt and hops and make it difficult to taste the beer. NoDa Gordgeous is not going to be one of our favorites.
Foothills Pumpkin Ale with Spices
- Can you taste pumpkin? NO
- Can you taste fall spices? YES
- Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
- Does it taste like beer? YES
Foothills Brewing in Winston-Salem is pretty straightforward with their naming, offering up their Pumpkin Ale with Spices for the harvest season. This golden orange beer offers up more of the latter than the former. It is crisp with a little more bite to it than the others we’ve had so far.
Although we bought them at the same time and place, the two bottles of Foothill’s ale we tried were distinctly different. The first bottle had a plasticky off taste that threw everything out of whack. The second bottle was much better. If we’re reading the date codes correctly, they were both bottled on Sept. 9. We’ll tell you about the second bottle.
Light and crisp, the beer drinks easily. The pumpkin flavor is muted and takes a backseat to the spices. The subtle flavors of nutmeg, allspice and hint of cinnamon and are balanced by enough sweet malt and hoppy bitterness to provide good balance. You don’t really noticed the 5.7% alcohol content. Foothills Pumpkin Ale is a great fall choice assuming the out-of-whack bottle we tasted was an anomaly.
New Belgium Atomic Pumpkin
- Can you taste pumpkin? YES
- Can you taste fall spices? CINNAMON
- Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
- Does it taste like beer? YES
New Belgium’s Atomic Pumpkin was a fun one to try even though we’re stretching a bit to include it in our North Carolina roundup. New Belgium has a brewery in Asheville, but this particular beverage is only brewed at their Ft. Collins, Colorado, headquarters.
Cracking open the can and pouring this beer releases the aroma of pumpkin and cinnamon and that quickly builds a thick head atop the burnt orange beer. Keen observers will note that New Belgium crossed out “Special Release” on the label and added “Spicy.” Something is afoot.
Atomic Pumpkin burns quick, fast and hot. In addition to pumpkin, the beer is brewed with cinnamon and with habanero, aji and del arbol peppers that deliver a burst of heat that fades quickly instead of building between sips. The spice plus the 6.4% alcohol content make this a perfect beer for cool evenings. The pumpkin and cinnamon dominate, but none of the other pumpkin-pie spices are present. It still tastes like beer. We’re fans.
Brüeprint Pumpkin Spice Edinbrüe
- Can you taste pumpkin? NO
- Can you taste fall spices? YES
- Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
- Does it taste like beer? YES
Brüeprint Brewing brings us a bit of the wee heavy, a pumpkin-spiced version of their year-round Edinbrüe Scotch ale. The scottie dog on the can has swapped his orange scarf for green, but the beer still weighs in at a hefty 8.2% ABV and has picked up hints of vanilla and cinnamon to compliment the malty, smoky, boozy burn. (We’ve found the tasting notes thoughtfully included on Brüeprint labels to be very dependable.)
There’s no pumpkin in Pumpkin Spice Edinbrüe, so that makes it unique among the cast so far. If you don’t think pumpkin belongs in beer, then here’s a way to get in on the pumpkin spice mania without the fruit. The vanilla notes give this beer a slight sweetness to balance alcohol, although it is unclear to us if any real vanilla was used during brewing.
Double Barley Gourd Rocker
-
Can you taste pumpkin? YES
-
Can you taste fall spices? YES
-
Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
-
Does it taste like beer? YES
Gourd Rocker is an imperial pumpkin porter (9.4% ABV) from Double Barley Brewing in Smithfield. Gourd Rocker is dark, dark brown and nearly opaque with a thin, beige head that doesn’t hang around. The pumpkin and spice come through in the aroma.
While it’s definitely not pumpkin pie in a glass as the label claims, it is a malty, roasty porter with subdued flavors of pumpkin, cinnamon and vanilla. It packs a boozy punch, but the alcohol blends well with the slight sweetness of the other flavors. Our glasses were empty much faster than we expected.
Sycamore Pumpkin Latte Blonde
-
Can you taste pumpkin? No
-
Can you taste fall spices? YES
-
Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
-
Does it taste like beer? YES
We’ve reached the first of the pumpkin/coffee combos in our roundup, and Sycamore Brewing doesn’t actually claim that there’s any pumpkin in their Pumpkin Latte Blonde. They list spices, vanilla and coffee but no pumpkin.
As promised, those are the flavors that come through in this beer. Pumpkin Latte Blonde’s main feature is a strong, pleasant coffee finish. Vanilla is there, but the spices are much harder to pick out. Everything blends well with the malt and hops to create a very nice alternative to the coffee porters and stouts that pack the shelves. We liked it.
Haw River Java Lantern
- Can you taste pumpkin? No
- Can you taste fall spices? YES
- Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
- Does it taste like beer? YES
Java Lantern Coffee Cream Stout from Haw River Farmhouse Ales in Saxapahaw is one of the more spice-forward beers in this group. Pouring this almost-black milk stout creates a thin head that releases the aroma of cinnamon, coffee and vanilla. The flavor is different, however, with an earthy taste that is more like allspice and nutmeg than cinnamon with a very slight sweetness from the lactose that makes it a milk stout.
Java Lantern’s 7.2% alcohol content puts it at the low end of the range for imperial stouts, so the booze is noticeable without being overwhelming. All these flavors seem like they’re crowding out the taste of pumpkin. There’s a lot going on with this beer, so it’s definitely worth a try if you’re in the mood for something different in the world of pumpkin spice beers.
Deep River’s Pumpkin Pie Porter
- Can you taste pumpkin? NO
- Can you taste fall spices? YES
- Does it taste like pumpkin pie? NO
- Does it taste like beer? YES
We wrap things up with Deep River Brewing Company‘s 5.9% ABV Pumpkin Pie Porter. If any of these beers were going to taste like pumpkin pie, we figured this would be it. This is a really tasty, smooth and lively porter with subtle notes of cinnamon and other spices, but we just don’t taste the pumpkin in this one (or the pie). Oddly, this is a great choice for a fall porter if you DON’T want your beer to taste like gourds or baked goods.