What Should a Beer Drinker Expect from a “Pumpkin Ale”?
Whenever I’m tasting any kind of specialty beer, I expect two things: 1) I expect the beer to still be fundamentally a beer at its heart and soul. I expect refreshment and drinking pleasure. and 2) I expect the special ingredients or processes to add something to the drinking experience: if I can’t tell that the beer is not a garden variety lager or ale, then it probably wasn’t worth brewing as a “specialty” beer. Vegetable beers — which is what a pumpkin ale is — are a tough case. Fruits add acids and esters that are easy to spot and that naturally work well with the sugars produced in a normal mashing regimen. Vegetables though can be starchy things that present challenges in the brewpubs while adding sulfuric compounds and components that tend to exacerbate some of the same classes of off flavors that most brewers work hard to eliminate. Pumpkin is not an ingredient that naturally fits with normal brewhouse techniques, and to be honest, most pumpkin beers aren’t particularly goo
