Last night my friends and I did a taste test with three pumpkin beers. I live on the west coast and these can be purchased relatively easily at any BevMo.
- Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale
- Shipyard Pumpkin Head Ale
- Buffalo Bills Pumpkin Ale
Buffalo Bills won as a favorite of everyone, here are some notes on the tasing:
* Harvest Moon had a great spice character in the nose. Everybody found it very enticing but once taking a drink the spice notes faded. Barely any pumpkin taste or color, looked like a light lager with a tint of orange in it.
* Shipyard Pumpkin Head is from Portland Maine, maybe the shipping time is the reason this beer scored so poorly. Everyone thought this beer had uninteresting nose and flavor, no pumpkin taste and relatively little spice. It did seem to look like it was brewed with more pumpkin, as it had almost a bright orange color.
* Buffalo Bills Pumpkin Ale is apparently the 'original', at least in the modern sense, pumpkin ale. It is brewed on the west coast for the Buffalo Bill brewery by Pyramid(probably brewed mine in Berkeley, so it was relatively fresh). Wonderful spice nose and slight hints of pumpkin, once you drink it one can taste the slightly tangy pumpkin flavor of pumpkin pie. The spice is present but not overpowering, it really does tasted like drinking a pumpkin pie, and in my opinion this is how a pumpkin ale should taste.