On a recent roadtrip in California I stopped to see some elephant seals.
But, I also got a lot of close encounters with some California ground squirrels. Apparently these cheeky little guys are very common along a good portion of the California coast, as well as up towards Oregon and even Washington state now.
Despite numerous “do not feed” signs at the elephant seal viewing area I was at, it seems these little critters are quite familiar with humans, and likely, foodstuffs provided by us.
A little darker brown in colour than some other ground squirrels I have seen in the US, in places like Wyoming, these California ground squirrels are not endangered at all, and to some they are considered pests.
I was actually surprised at how thick their coats of fur seemed to be. I mean, it was really windy there, but it was warm and sunny. You’d think California squirrels would be happier in a more slimming outfit, but I guess not.
The pumpkin beer “season” seems to expand every year. This is a troubling trend.
Like a weed, or a virus, it seems otherwise normal beer drinkers are being infected at alarmingly larger and larger numbers, helping to expedite the availability of this most vile type of flavoured beer.
This is the time of year that I most love and most dread when it comes to craft beer. Weather is getting cooler and it is harvest time, so beers like harvest ales or fresh hop brews begin to pop up. They signal a change, where darker, maltier, heavier beers become more prominent. Soon it will be stouts and porters taking the main stage in the beer fridge. I really look forward to this change.
But then there is the pumpkin beer phase. To me, it is akin to having an asparagus beer season in May, or a broccoli beer season in July or August. Why don’t those exist? I actually enjoy those vegetables more than pumpkin. So why does pumpkin beer even exist?
I know I am not alone in my hatred towards pumpkin beers. It is the most divisive style of beer around, I believe. Sure, some beer nerds can stand behind the pumpkin beer wagon, citing how it has been a style of beer for nearly 250 years, but I’d argue it should have died off long ago.
Over the years I have tried many, many pumpkin beers in an effort to try to appreciate them. But no. It does not happen. Each year I am left wondering why I wasted money and taste buds on these horrendous concoctions.
For those who are also tricked into drinking these beers each year, I give you the following Pumpkin beer reviews, so you know just how bad they are. Read them as a reminder next time you feel tempted.
On a good note, the dreaded pumpkin beer season is also a time of year I tend to take a month off of drinking beer. Sometime between September and November I’ll take a health break and when the market is saturated by pumpkins, it makes it a lot easier to stop drinking!
Even if you sugar coat the pumpkin beer with a massive dose of cinnamon, nutmeg, chocolate, brown sugar, allspice, anise or pretty much any other flavour agent, it is still going to be gross. That whole lipstick on pigs thing, you know?
Because of my lack of desire in drinking pumpkin beers, I must say that I “accidentally” aged some for more than a year, simply because I didn’t want to drink them. These beers are not meant to be aged, but I will say they tasted less-gross over time as the pumpkin taste died off, making them more tolerable than some fresh pumpkin beers.
I hate the smell of this beer. It’s pure pumpkin. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin mash…spiced pumpkin. Ok, so ya I hate pumpkin, which makes drinking pumpkin beers kind of odd. Usually there is some brown sugar or malts or flavour mix on the aroma that masks the pumpkin enough for me to find it drinkable. Not so with this beer. Pumpkin overload!
For some people that is a good thing – a pumpkin beer that smells like pumpkin pie. It pours with little head and is a deep golden orange colour. After a few minutes it appears totally still, no head remaining at all.
Moving past the aroma, it’s a strong beer this one (8.6%) but the alcohol is mostly hidden by a strong spice profile. Nutmeg, butter, cinnamon and of course pumpkin mix together for a strong flavoured brew. Overall it’s strong on pumpkin, a bit too much for me.
I have to admit to drinking this beer on multiple occasions. It was years ago, during a beer phase where I felt ashamed if I didn’t like certain beers that other people said were great. If at first you don’t like it, try and try again! NO…not with pumpkin beers I finally learned.
Caramely and spicey. It screams pumpkin beer and will make you wish for something else, anything else.
I have no idea if the fine folks at Bandido Brewing are going to make this beer again for 2018, but I suspect they will.
When you spend months in the Galapagos Islands, where almost every beer is a watery lager, you begin to crave any kind of new beer taste you can find. So, I enjoyed this pumpkin beer more than I would under normal circumstances, as my beer palate had been suffering prior to this.
If you find yourself in Quito, Ecuador and see this beer, give it a go as it may be the only pumpkin beer in Ecuador, so even if you hate the taste, hooray for the novelty factor!
It is a strange combination that works for some beer drinkers. For me, it does not. It may be a step above the usual pumpkin-laced beverage, but even with some Belgian yeasty-spicey flavours to counteract the pumpkin and related spicey flavours, it sucks in the overall grand scheme of beers. Despite the marketing BS on the label, I was once told this beer was simply No Chance with Miranda with pumpkin and spices added. It sounds about right.
Points added for being different, but multiple points deducted for still being a pumpkin beer.
Pumpkin beer-loving freaks will enjoy this one, but it wasn’t for me. I only had a sample on my most recent tasting, and that is about the proper serving size for any pumpkin beer.
Some vanilla actually cut through a lot of the pumpkin junk, without making the beer sweet, so that is a good thing. I like Lake of Bays, but their dedication to pumpkin style beers over the years creates a conundrum. If I avoid them from August-October I guess I am safe from the pumpkin invasion?
Likely the first, and only, time I will ever visit a brewery and try two pumpkin beers.
That is what I will remember most about Burnt Hickory. I enjoyed their special “Man in the Trees” version of this beer better, but this one kind of left me thinking pumpkin beers were not terrible, simply because all the flavours were so mild and muted.
Dubbed an imperial pumpkin porter, the beer somehow achieved a more sweet malty profile with a hint of liquorice. Unlike how I hate pumpkin flavours, even in beers, I do enjoy liquorice flavour in beer, despite hating black liquorice candy.
I had this some time ago, and didn’t take much in the way of notes except to clearly state it was “chewy”.
So, if you like thick pumpkin pie that requires chewing, I guess you’d like this abomination of a beer? Since pumpkin pie is beyond gross as well, saying this tastes like pumpkin pie should turn just about anyone off of it.
Overall I would call this more of a spiced beer than a pumpkin beer though. It clearly falls into the generic pumpkin ale flavour profile – nothing new to see here folks.
I do hope to find a pumpkin beer I really enjoy one day, although I fear it will never happen. This one was tolerable, partly because I sat on it for over a year and the flavours all just melded together into a slightly-spiced, minimal-pumpkin flavoured ale.
That’s the way I like my pumpkin beers, with minimal pumpkin flavour! This one was a tad sweet overall, and bit flat. I can’t imagine any pumpkin beer ever tasting better fresh, but hey…
I mean some pumpkin beers add odd spices, or have a different base beer instead of your typical ale. This is just an ale, with pumpkin and related spices added.
It has a pretty strong pumpkin aroma that wafts out at ya when you open it up, so that pretty much sets it up for disaster in my books. While sweet, its from the malts more than anything. Needs more spice, more body and less pumpkin!
Sweet and spicey or bland and boring? That is for you to decide, if you dare drink this pumpkin beer.
You can’t go wrong either way. The beer is inoffensive, but if you like nutmeg and cinnamon type spices, you’ll at least like that. Pumpkin flavour is mild in this one, which I obviously prefer. But if you’re craving a bold pumpkin beer, or bold beer at all, it is not this one. It’s kind of lame on flavour, like those cucumber and watermelon beers you see in summer…this is the pumpkin beer version of those.
But hey, lots of people don’t drink beer for the flavour, so go ahead and try this perennial contender for most-consumed pumpkin beer in Toronto.
Smells like pumpkin. Tastes like pumpkin. Seriously, pumpkin is a pretty strong flavour, so why do I torture myself trying so many pumpkin beers that I know I won’t want to ever drink again?
For this beer, I tried it because it was from New Zealand. You know – maybe their pumpkins taste different down there? Nope. They do not. The grossness of pumpkins seems to be global.
One saving grace for this beer was it had a dry, hoppy finish to it which cut out any potential lingering pumpkin flavour. Phew.
What the hell. Uh oh, no head. This beer pours flat and syrupy. Sugary liquid to follow? Yes, indeed.
This pumpkin beer has an overpoweringly sweet, sugary taste of molasses with very little evidence of alcohol or pumpkin flavour.
The finish of the beer does allow some spiced pumpkin taste to linger on the tongue, letting you realize that this is actually a pumpkin brew. Skip this one, unless you like pumpkin syrup.
As part of their Pugsley Signature Series, Shipyard releases this seasonal beer each year for any weird people that enjoy drinking liquid pumpkin guts.
It smells like pumpkin pie and nutmeg. It has a deep, dark orange colour to it and at 9% at least you only need to drink one or two to get a buzz, if that is what you’re after. I have no idea what a pumpkin-induced hangover would be like but I can only imagine it would be ugly.
I would say, of the limited beers I’ve had from Shipyard, this is my least favourite. They do make a root beer, which is average as well, so maybe I shouldn’t have had high expectations? (Yes, I often judge a brewery by their root beer).
I had this interesting pumpkin beer at a barleywine tasting recently and despite all the efforts, it still came out as a slightly sweet, kinda gross, pumpkin beer.
This one was aged in bourbon barrels with cinnamon and vanilla, and some other spices. If you try hard enough you can pick out the barrel influence and sweetness that rounds out the flavour profile.
Too much effort for lacklustre results in my opinion. Thanks for trying, but even a barrel-aged barleywine pumpkin beer still can’t convince me this style deserves to exist. Kill all pumpkins! Just don’t put them in my beers.
Now can we start talking about pecan pie beers instead of pumpkin pie beers? Because if more breweries released pecan pie beers I would be a happy drinker at this time of year! For those of you who actually do like pumpkin beers, I can say none of these beers would be deemed “bad” by your palate, except maybe the Black Creek beer, but I think I may have just had a bad / too old version of that one.
Monkeys are often mischievous creatures when they’re transplanted into or near to human settlements. You can’t really blame them, we tend to leave food and belongings lying around, and they tend to be curious in nature, so it can result in some human-monkey clashes.
In Puerto Misahualli, Ecuador there is such a troop of monkeys. They are critically endangered Ecuadorian white-faced capuchin monkeys to be precise, although guides and travellers who don’t know better often call them squirrel monkeys. Puerto Misahualli is near Tena, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. If you venture further into the Amazon you’ll likely encounter other monkeys, including squirrel monkeys.
Anyhow, these 20 or so Ecuadorian capuchin monkeys in Puerto Misahualli mostly hang out in some trees that line a central park and nearby restaurants. Occasionally they’ll run along power lines or roofs of buildings. If you’re not paying attention they may grab some food or small objects form you too, including being bold enough to run into some restaurants to grab food, so keep a watchful eye!
I think this guy was keeping a watchful eye on me too. I suppose these monkeys are now semi-wild. They’re more than free to leave the town, and there are bigger, better trees outside of town to live in – but I guess life is good when tourists stop by and become easy targets for free food. It all started many years ago, decades ago actually, when some wild ones began to come into town to raid houses and shops for food. Eventually the entire troop of monkeys caught on and have been here ever since.
A White-fronted Ecuadorian Capuchin Monkey in Misahualli, Ecuador
This coming Saturday is Brew Camp at Sawdust City Brewery and I’ll be there!
I’m sure our small group of beer campers will be a bunch of passionate beer lovers, so I am quite looking forward to brewing my first beer with them. As someone who has never done any home brewing, this is the perfect opportunity for me to get a bit more hands-on by seeing, and helping with, an actual brewing process. I realize home brewing and brewing on a large commercial scale are different beasts, but I’m kind of more interested in seeing how beer is brewed by one of my favourite Ontario breweries anyways!
A flight of beers at the Sawdust City Saloon
It has been 3+ years since the current Sawdust City Brewery facility opened, and I fondly remember my first visit shortly after they opened. The first beer I tried in their Saloon was Gourd Downie Pumpkin Ale. I tend to hate pumpkin beers (my least favourite style), but I did enjoy that one. I visited a number of times on trips up north and liked that they always had a couple of odd, “fun-off” type of experimental brews on tap in the Brewery Saloon like Pink Pajamas and The Salty Brine. They may not always have experimental beers on tap now, as they are more likely to have a guest tap or two, plus they’ve created too many solid beers the past few years that are often on tap!
Nowadays I have a few Sawdust City beers that are in my regular rotation. Lone Pine IPA still stands up to any other Ontario IPAs out there, which I can enjoy any time of year (and Juicin’ appeals to the soft, fluffy IPA drinkers now). The Blood of Cthulhu is a treat on any cold, winter day, and one of my go-to simple summer softball beers is Little Norway, which I always bring with me when playing a game at Little Norway park in Toronto. The beer name itself is tied to some pretty cool Canadian history too, which is something Sawdust City does with some of their beer names.
It is going to be a fun day on Saturday. I’m not sure what type of beer we’ll be making, nor am I sure how hard they’ll work us! I’m sure I’ll gain a new level of respect for all the brewery workers who spend their days working hard to create delicious drink treats for us beer consumers! I’m looking at this day as an amped up Brewery Tour, with some nice perks that I’ll have to work for!
Looking forward to some tasty Sawdust City beers at Brew Camp!
We’ll be learning all day long, and enjoying some food and brews along the way. Aside from lunch and a beer, we’ll get our very own Brew Camp shirts. Plus, of course we get to bottle and take home the beer we brew when it is ready in a few weeks! Will our beer turn out to be a winner? Will anyone fall into some tanks? Will I be the only one with zero brewing knowledge? I’ll find out in a few days – wish me luck!
As for Brew Camp, this isn’t the first time Sawdust City has put together the concept, and I’m sure it won’t be the last either. Check their website events list and social media channels for news on any future Brew Camps if it sounds like something you’d like to do!
One of my longest-standing beer traditions is picking up a Fuller’s Vintage Ale from the LCBO every December. I’ve done this for probably the past 15 years or so.
12 years ago I upped my game and began purchasing more than one bottle each year. I usually would buy three bottles: one to drink right away, one to enjoy after a couple of years, and one to store away until…now.
A 12 Year Tasting of Fuller’s Vintage Ales
I thought after I had 10 vintages I’d crack them open, but I had a nice box I was storing them in, which had two empty slots still, so I continued on until this year, where I now have 12 years of beers to enjoy for the holidays.
Starting with Fuller’s Vintage Ale 2017 and ending with Fuller’s Vintage Ale 2006, myself and some other beer people will see how things stack up year over year. What vintage do you think will come out on top? Will the 2006 still be holding up? Should I have waited even longer to do this beer vertical?
As the strength of this beer stays the same every year at 8.5%, but the mix of hops used in the recipe change, it will be interesting to see just how much variance there is from year to year. Strangely, the bottles from 2006-2012 each have a best before date of three years after they were produced. Bottles from 2013-2017 have a best before date of 10 years after they were produced. Not sure what brought about that change!
I know from my personal preferences that drinking the Fuller’s Vintage Ales when they first come out is sometimes a bit too early. They are good, but get better with a few years on them. But is 10+ years too long? We shall find out soon! I’ll be taking notes at this tasting and reporting back here soon.
Click on the Title of any vintage blow to see the Untappd check-in.
Notes: Whoa, massive gusher! 1.5ft high. Lost 4/5ths of the beer. Apple! Spice! So nice! Best yet. Cinnamon & more, beauty beer, but likely not what it was meant to be like.
Notes: Don’t mean to be biased because this is the oldest of the vertical, but this is fantastically blended. Super smooth, caramel, fruits, wood.
Final verdict is that Fuller’s Vintage Ales hold up for many years. Definitely beyond the “3 years” posted on bottles up to 2012. After having some time to let everything settle and go over my notes, there really wasn’t a ton of variance in these beers. The 2017 was the only one with nutty flavours, and the 2009 anomaly must have turned to become something different. The risk of ageing too long seems to be a potentially “flat” flavour profile that happened in the 2007, but the 2006 escaped this flaw.
