#11 Whole Hog Pumpkin Ale

This beer is from a brewery called Stevens Point, but is not labeled as such on the bottle. This doesn't make much sense to me. I don't have any clue why they did this.


Taste: A great pumpkin start followed by a heavy spice finish. There's not an overwhelming amount of pumpkin spice. But don't let it get warm.
Smell: Heavy cinnamon and pumpkin
Color: Espresso (#572315)
Stars: 7.5/10
Buy Again?: Yes

#10 Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin

Well, when you create something perfect, you can't expect it to be perfect twice. You can only hope that it's good enough.

Taste: A decent bit of pumpkin, a great bit of vanilla, and pumpkin spices. This is good, just not great.
Smell: Heavy on the pumpkin and light on the pumpkin and spices. Basically the opposite of the taste.
Color: Copper (#B26A2F)
Stars: 7/10
Buy Again?: Maybe

#9 Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale

This tastes nothing like other pumpkin beers. I had someone else try (without telling them what it was) and they didn't believe me when I said it was a pumpkin beer. I freaking love this beer though. Wanna know what it tastes like?


Taste: Horchata. Yes. Horchata. My friend got cinnamon elephant ears (Like at carnivals), so close enough. I recoiled after my first sip. I thought I had lost my damn mind. Maybe I have. This tastes more like Horchata than the Blue Moon Horchata beer. I love this
Smell: Heavy Cinnamon.
Color: My Sin (#FFB719)
Stars: 9/10
Buy Again?: YES. OH YES SIR!

#8 Fantome Boo

I have a slight disclaimer before the pictures. This beer was probably over a year old when I bought it, if I'm lucky. It left a dust ring when I picked it up off of the shelf. If you decide to try and buy this, look for sediment in the bottom. You won't know it's there until the last 1/5 of the bomber. Which, up until this point, was when I would take the photos.



No, beer should not look like gross coffee. It was a more orange-ish color when it started. Second disclaimer: I have no clue if it is a pumpkin beer or not. I've looked, believe me. There are some sites that say it is, and some that say it isn't. The Fantome website was no help. This may also be the only foreign "pumpkin" beer I find. I have scoured Indy at this point and this is the only one I could find. Also, it came with a cork under the cap! How bizarre.


Taste: How can something be both smoky and sour? This beer proves that it's possible. My best guess is a German-style Rauchbeer (smoked beer) with pumpkin added. It's so bizarre.
Smell: Sour, like old pumpkin.
Color: Paarl (#935382)
Stars: 2.5/10 (the bottom is a 0)
Buy Again?: No. God no. Keep away from Pumpkins, Belgium.

UPDATE: This was the only foreign "pumpkin" beer I was able to locate.

#7 Indiana City Brewing Co.: Death By Pumpkin

This bottle is too cool. I almost felt bad opening this. Cracking the wax top seal made me feel like an adult (happy, but a little sad).

Taste: If you want to know what pumpkin tastes like, I think this is the closest anyone is going to get. I'm actually stunned with this beer. Advice: Drink this at room temp. No clue why it's so much better, but it is.
Smell: Like pumpkins. Fairly straight forward.
Color: Pueblo (#811A13)
Stars: 6.5/10
Buy Again?: Yes

#6 The Bruery Autumn Maple

Now, while the last beer was made with Pumpkins, this one was made with Yams. I know, not a pumpkin. But it is a gourd. I'm including it because, well, close enough.


Taste: This was like drinking molasses. I kinda like molasses, but I'm not looking to have a Super Troopers experience here. There was barely any other flavor detected. This next part is important. DO NOT LET IT GET WARM! God help you if you think it'll get better as it warms. It won't.
Smell: What a surprise, Yams and Molasses.
Color: Paco (#36120E)
Stars: 6/10 (1.5/10 when warm)
Buy Again?: No

#5 He'Brew Reunion Ale '15

While this may not be classified as a "Pumpkin Beer", it was brewed with pumpkins, so I'm counting it. This was another amazing Muncie find.

Taste: The taste was crazy on this beer. There was a ton of chocolate flavor, mixed in with some chili powder and ginger. There wasn't a ton of pumpkin taste, but it accentuated the other flavors beautifully. The amount of ingredients for this beer scared me, but it payed off.
Smell: Cocoa with a bit of pumpkin. Tiny amounts of chili to make your nostrils tingle.
Color: Metallic Copper (#6E2D23)
Stars: 6/10
Buy Again?: Maybe

#4 Cambridge Brewing Co.: THE GREAT Pumpkin Ale

Through some stroke of luck, I was in Muncie recently and visited my favorite liquor store, Friendly Package. I found this beer and a TON more. And since this place allows you to take singles out of a six pack, I scored a ton of beer. This beer was surprising to me because the logo had me hoping it would be so much better.

Taste: It was a very heavy beer to drink. It had the heft of a Guinness almost. There was some pumpkin taste, but was overpowered by the ale.
Smell: Like an ale. Little to no pumpkin spice detected.
Color: Irish Coffee (#5B2C22)
Stars: 4/10
Buy Again?: No 

#3 Boulevard Funky Pumpkin

Well, that didn't take long. While the Smuttynose wasn't great, it was drinkable. This, however, set pumpkin beers back decades for me.

Taste: SOUR. So sour. Cold or warm, didn't matter. It was overwhelmingly sour. Barely any pumpkin or allspice.
Smell: Surprisingly sweet. The pumpkin aroma is so light and sweet.
Color: Flamenco (#FE780D)
Stars: 2/10
Buy Again?: NOOO

Slight tangent. I like IPAs. Didn't use to, but now I'm in love with them. IPAs to me, are bitter, not sour. I just wanted to clarify that flavor description for some reason. Stay away from this beer.

#2 Hoppin Frog Barrel Aged Frog's Hollow Double Pumpkin

Dear Lord is that a mouthful. And hopefully, this is the most expensive beer I buy. It is a bomber, but this bad boy clocked in at $18. But holy **** this beer is amazing.

Taste: When cold, this beer has powerful pumpkin flavor that accentuates a smooth, yet sour bourbon taste. When warm, the finish is smooth as silk. This beer is meant to be savored. Heck, this beer might deserve to be prayed to.
Smell:  Strong Pumpkin Spice and Bourbon
Color: Tabasco (8B2E0F)
Stars: 8.5/10
Buy Again?: YESSSSSS

I know that's nuts. $18 for a beer is WAY too much. But I'm telling all of you, if you like Bourbon-Barrel beers, this isn't one to miss. And no, I won't buy one every time I see one, but I'd gladly buy and drink this again. In fact, I'll buy one every year until they suck. That's how good this beer is.

Update (10/15) I apologize for not being able to list the price for every beer I find. I already have 40 in my fridge and I lost the receipt for the rest. I remembered the price for this one because, come on, it's hard to forget an $18 beer.

#1 Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

(Please forgive me for the bad lighting. It will be better from here on out).

Well, I was thrilled to finish this one...and not in a good way.

Taste: Very bitter with a nice pumpkin finish. Had some tartness to it and a good amount of nutmeg.
Smell: Beautiful pumpkin and nutmeg aroma.
Color: Meteor (#D3630F)
Stars: 4/10
Buy Again?: No

The Great Pumpkin Beer Experiment

This all started on August 8, 2015. I was walking around Big Red Liquors in Brownsburg and noticed some pumpkin beers were already out.

Does that make sense to anyone else? I usually think about pumpkins being more of an October/November kind of thing. Late September if you're really pushing it. But the second week of August?

Not only that, but how can anyone's pumpkin harvest be close to done—let alone been through the entire beer making process, bottled, and shipped?

Anyway, after looking a little more closely, I noticed there wasn't just one pumpkin beer—there were seven! At that moment, I had a very serious decision to make—am I going to get the beers I haven't tried or get them all?




Obviously I bought all of them.

After I started loading up my Mix-And-Match 6 pack (Plus one), I made another promise to myself. From that moment on, until the end of November, I would buy every Pumpkin beer I found. I had always wanted to do this, and it's 2015. My goal is to hit 60 beers. I don't know how realistic this is due to Indiana's unbelievably stringent alcohol import laws, but 60 is the goal.

Here's what I'm hoping to accomplish. I'm hoping to discover the greatest pumpkin beers around. I also want to let my friends know which beers they should look for and which beers to stay away from.

I know pumpkin beers have good and bad years, but if a beer is terrible, I don't think a new batch next year will make me change my mind. Will I still drink it though...Probably.

I'll be supplying some information for each beer: Taste, Smell, Color, Stars, and Buy Again.

The color hex code will be discovered in Photoshop, which I will take to http://chir.ag/projects/name-that-color/ to find the color name. It's not perfect, but it's what I can do.

Edit (09/01) I realized Buy Again will be tricky. Just because a beer gets a high Star Rating doesn't mean I recommend buying it again. For instance, the Rogue Pumpkin Savior was an 8/10, but I don't recommend buying it more than once. I remember that Pumpkin Savior was $12. So it's a beer I like, but not one I figure I'll buy again. Make sense? Great!