Three cheers for pumpkin beer

It’s that time of year: as the sign outside Mel’s says, gimme dat pumpkin beer. Inspired by the spirit of the season, Bwog’s Alexandras have taken over 2girls1snack duty for the week, and will be bringing you that most delicious of autumn beverages: pumpkin beer. Beers were judged both by overall taste and by the relative presence of pumpkin in the flavor palate. 2girls! 1name! 6 beers! 

Woodchuck Hard Cider: Pumpkin

Stay away from this. Not only does the bottle resemble a traffic cone with its aggressive orange shade, the Woodchuck monstrosity combines artificial sweetness with…more artificial sweetness to produce something that smells and tastes upsettingly like Red Bull. Not only was there not a hint of pumpkin, there was not a hint of anything resembling beer. Or good things.

Post Road Pumpkin Ale 

Despite the “honest,” “New Hampshire” reminiscent label, Post Road’s offering also disappointed on the pumpkin line. An Alexandra described it as “dark;” it’s otherwise completely nondescript. Tastes a bit like nothing. If you’d blindfolded us and given us this beer, it would not have crossed our minds that there was pumpkin involved.

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

The label art is oddly realist. While there was definitely more flavor in this sample than others, 2girls detected more spice than pumpkin per se. In fact, it was “kind of like the spice part of a pumpkin spice latte.” The taste was similarly dark, and one of the least sweet options we tried–it would’ve been oddly paired with those cutesy pink sleeves at Starbucks.

Captain Lawrence Pumpkin Ale

Captain Lawrence won the game for overall pumpkin flavor, and didn’t taste that bad either. (According to one Alexandra, it also won for bottle art.) Tasting yielded artistic descriptions such as “really barky. Like pumpkin stem,” and “wooden.” One of the Alexandras used the term “hops” to which the other Alexandra replied “I don’t know what the fuck that means.”  The overall taste was smooth and met with approval.

Abita FallFest Ale

Ironically, the only beer not marketed as pumpkin flavored did well in the pumpkin-flavored department, coming second only to Captain Lawrence. At this point we vaguely wondered if we were being pumpkin punk’d. The taste was light and relatively sweet, without the horrible syrupy quality of the Woodchuck. It seemed a balanced beer, and came in an adorable stout bottle. End notes were reminiscent of fall leaves.

Blue Point Pumpkin Ale 

Blue Point was the most delicious beer with complex flavors — none of which, unfortunately, were pumpkin. It still got finished the quickest out of the 6 offerings, so we guess that counts as a win. Or a good buzz.

Real scores below: