Pumpkin Ale - Clocktower Brewpub (Canada - Ontario - Ottawa)

Pumpkin Ale - Clocktower Brewpub (Canada - Ontario - Ottawa) 

Amber in a glass, clear without much of a head. The aroma is pleasantly pumpkin-ey with a mix of spices, very much like pumpkin pie.

The taste is along the same lines, a good balance of pumpkin spices and pumpkin flavour.  The beer is well carbonated but there is something about the mouthfeel that tells me this beer was made with lots of real pumpkin.

This is a very nice pumpkin ale and if you are in Ottawa it does get much more fresh or more local than this. However, a word of warning: they will serve it with a sprinkle of pumpkin-spice unless you ask them not to. I think the beer's flavour is already nicely balanced so I recommend against the garnish.

Update: I tried it with the pumpkin-spice garnish and it amps up the aroma a notch but doesn't affect the flavour very much past the first few drinks.

Highballer Pumpkin Ale - Grand River Brewing (Canada - Ontario - Cambridge)

Highballer Pumpkin Ale - Grand River Brewing (Canada - Ontario - Cambridge) 5.2%

Full gold with an orange hue in a glass. A spice forward aroma: cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and perhaps all-spice with a faint hint of pear, gourd and some toast, cereal and caramel.

Strongly nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves taste but with a distinctly pumpkin flavour as well. Sweet and quite heavily spiced although its flavouring, not including the malt flavours, can be broken down as 60% spices and 40% pumpkin. Highballer Pumpkin Ale has fairly low carbonation which makes for a smooth, watery mouthfeel even though there is a malty body with some toast and cereal notes.

Chatoe Rogue Pumpkin Patch Ale (USA - Oregon - Newport) 6.0%

Chatoe Rogue Pumpkin Patch Ale (USA - Oregon - Newport) 6.0%

A slightly cloudy, deep copper colour like a lucky (though not shiny) penny. Cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg, the classic aroma of pumpkin pie, along with touches of the earthy aroma of the gourd itself.

The flavour is more or less identical to my description of the aroma though there is a bit of a roasty and sweet malt flavour which complements the spices nicely. There is some sediment at the bottom and, if it finds its way into your glass, it adds not just some yeast flavours (banana and an intensification of the cloves) but also suggestions of the orange peel Rogue used so it's worth adding.

Pumpkin Ale - Great Lakes Brewery (Canada - Ontario - Toronto)

Pumpkin Ale - Great Lakes Brewery (Canada - Ontario - Toronto) 5.5%

A slightly cloudy, orange and gold colour in a glass. Great Lakes Brewery's Pumpkin Ale features a pumpkin aroma with cinnamon, all-spice and nutmeg but this aroma features with more gourd than spice.

The aforementioned spices are prominent in the flavour but, like in the aroma, a strong, earthy, gourd taste of pumpkin really is the main player in this tasty pumpkin ale. It also features a fairly bitter finish.

Pumpkin Ale 2013 - Black Creek Historic Brewery (Canada - Ontario - Toronto)

Pumpkin Ale 2013 - Black Creek Historic Brewery (Canada - Ontario - Toronto) 5.0%

A dark amber but appropriately orange also with a thin head. The aroma is very strongly pumpkin and spices: ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and maybe a hint of cloves. An extremely appetizing aroma and, even though it has a hefty spiced character, distinctly pumpkin.

The taste is pumpkin and the same yummy spices from the aroma with a little dry hops. The finish is very roasty and sweet with lingering pumpkin and spices. So, basically, there are flavours of pumpkin and spices throughout but they are most strongly in the aroma. After I got over the step down in intensity from the initial aroma to the taste I found Black Creek's Pumpkin Ale to be most delightful and very refreshing on this unseasonably hot day at the end of August.

Pumpkin UFO - Harpoon Brewery (USA - Massachusetts - Boston)

Pumpkin UFO - Harpoon Brewery (USA - Massachusetts - Boston) 5.9%

Smells just like pumpkin pie, gingery also. Tastes just like it too. A little bitter and even more bitter towards the finish as well as somewhat tangy with hops. This would be a really fun beer to serve at Thanksgiving or Halloween, it really suits autumn.

As I drank it in the latter stages of August I got that familiar flutter of excitement in my chest that I always get during the fall. An orange cloudy amber colour in a glass.

West Coast IPA - Churchkey Brewing (Canada - Ontario - Campbellford)

West Coast IPA - Churchkey Brewing (Canada - Ontario - Campbellford) 5.0%

Gold in a glass; not much of a head. The aroma and taste are very similar: dominated by the hops character of melon and muted grapefruit with a touch of cucumber and earthiness that combine to be something much like a gourd or mild squash - not quite pumpkin because the flavour is too cool and mellow. A slightly strange kind of IPA.

St-Ambroise Citroulle: The Great Pumpkin Ale - McAuslan Brewing (Canada - Montreal)

St-Ambroise Citroulle: The Great Pumpkin Ale - McAuslan Brewing (Canada - Quebec - Montreal) 5.0%

Strong raw pumpkin aroma with some pumpkin pie crust tones and spices like nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon. Plenty of the aforementioned spices in the taste along with a noticable cloves tone that I didn't notice as much in the aroma; quite sweet (brown sugar) with some raw pumpkin and pumpkin pie flavours. Quite a dark brown in a glass with an orange hue.

Pumpkin is a funny kind of flavour because for many people the only way they eat pumpkin is in pumpkin pie. As a result, lots of these pumpkin beers, including this one, are spiced like pumpkin pie however there are some nice flavours to be had from the flesh of the gourd itself. McAuslan's St-Ambroise Citroulle The Great Pumpkin Ale does a good job of balancing the two: genuine pumpkin flavour and the familiar and comforting spices of pumpkin pie. Propeller's Pumpkin Ale is more heavy on the pumpkin side while Mill Street's Nightmare on Mill Street is more on the spiced pie side of the spectrum.

Although this helpful tip probably comes a week or more too late, the next time you are carving a pumpkin it is interesting to try a little taste of the raw flesh of the pumpkin. It is an interesting flavour, quite mild and delicate, but trying it raw and on its own may also give you a better idea of which flavours are coming from which ingredients for the next time you try a pumpkin ale.

Propeller Pumpkin Ale (Canada - Nova Scotia - Halifax)

Propeller Pumpkin Ale (Canada - Nova Scotia - Halifax) 5.0%

Aroma contains more spice than pumpkin but there is gourd and a hint of green in there. Crystal clear and gold coloured in a glass. Lots of spice in the taste and quite a bitter finish. The gourd flavour from the pumpkin is nice though at times quite green tasting: the way it mixes with the spices is almost herbal and can nearly border on minty. The mix of spices is nice but there is a slightly hollow feel to the taste because the malt flavour is so light while the spice and gourd taste can be so strong that the malt is often overpowered by the spice. All in all a nice pumpkin beer that really suits this time of year.

Mill Street's Autumn Harvest (Canada - Ontario - Toronto)

Mill Street's Autumn Harvest six-pack (now available at Nova Scotia Liquor Stores as well as in Ontario) contains their Oktoberfest and Nightmare On Elm Street Pumpkin Ale. I appreciate them combining two of their seasonal ales into one six-pack and review both beers below.

Nightmare On Mill Street - Mill St (Canada - Ontario - Toronto) 5.0%

This pumpkin flavoured wheat beer pours a clear chestnut and gold colour with a quick fading head but nice lacing. Lots of pumpkin as well as pumpkin pie spice flavour in the aroma along with some milk chocolate which gets stronger as the beer sits. The taste is quite dark, with sweet roasty and pie crust flavours, a bit of that same milk chocolate from the aroma as well but not much pumpkin or spice. However, there are still some pumpkin pie spice flavours but Nightmare On Mill Street is more like drinking a beer in the vicinity of a baking pumpkin pie than drinking a typical pumpkin ale that would be heavy with those flavours. A tasty beer and a nice Autumn treat but there are other beers that taste more clearly like pumpkin.

Ocktoberfest - Mill St (Canada - Ontario - Toronto) 5.6%

A aroma like crusty dinner rolls, a touch of sweetness and darker earthy roast and underlying dry hop bitterness. A nice robustly malty taste with that same slightly darker touch of earthiness and light roasty glaze with a mild mix of red and dark fruit esters. A balancing moderate dry Euro hops bitterness comes through as well. Mill Street Oktoberfest leaves a moderately bitter umami aftertaste that might remind me of very lightly burnt toast. An orange gold colour in a glass, quite a dark gold. A very fine Oktoberfest beer: tasty, complex yet sessionable and true to the style.

Gahan House Pumpkin Ale - PEI Brewing Company (Canada - PEI - Charlottetown)

Gahan House Pumpkin Ale - PEI Brewing Company (Canada - PEI - Charlottetown)

Sweet with a bitter tangy jolt. A honeydew hops tinge to the aroma and flavour along with, of course, pumpkin. The pumpkin is a mix of the flavour of the actual gourd mixed with spice and meaty nutmeg shanks that remind me of, not only pumpkin pie filling, but the crust and Christmas and Thanksgiving too.

Gahan's Pumpkin Ale is unique compared to other pumpkin ales because others usually taste mostly like the filling but this also has that darkness of the crumbly crust, and this is reflected in the colour - it is a darker pumpkin orange, like dark brushed copper.

Definitely one of my favourite Autumn/Fall seasonals. It was available at the Gahan House Pub in downtown Charlottetown in 2011. Hopefully they are brewing it again this year!