Professor Good Ales

Pumpkin beer’s not all sugar and spice: There’s a faction of fall brews that depend as much on sinister roasty malts as they do on gourd meat and cinnamon. Go on over to the dark side and search for these sultry seasonals.

Avery Pump[KY]n: This barrel-aged beaut wins the biggest pumpkin (beer) contest, topping out at about 17% ABV. A beastly spiced porter aged 6 months in bourbon barrels (there’s the “KY”!), the beer’s a sibling of Avery’s Rumpkin (a pumpkin ale aged in rum barrels) and the newest addition to the brewery’s Barrel Series. Huge additions of nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and cloves are joined by alcohol spice and offset by chocolate and toffee malts and vanilla-bourbon sweetness.

RedHook Out of Your Gourd: Nearly sessionable at 5.8% ABV, this pumpkin porter reads cola-like with just a smidge of dry pumpkin juice in the middle and earthy maple in the finish.

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Written by Franz Hofer for Tempest in a Tankard

A half-hour’s drive along the winding Highway 119 out of Boulder and just east of the Continental Divide, Nederland exudes a rough-hewn and offbeat charm. Nederland, which means both lowland and the Netherlands in Dutch, came by its name when a mining company from Holland purchased the nearby Caribou Mine in 1873. Indeed, the name of the town is more than a little ironic, given that Nederland sits at an elevation of around 2500 meters (8200 feet) above sea level. But for the miners who trudged up the mountain to work and then down again in the evening for a cold one after a long day, the moniker was more than apt.

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This is how many brewers made it through Prohibition…-PGA

Among craft beer fans, Sprecher Brewing Co. might be best known for its Sprecher Amber — or perhaps its Black Bavarian.

But the Glendale-based brewer’s most popular brand, by far, is one with a sweeter taste: Sprecher Root Beer.

Sprecher Brewing sells around three times as much root beer and other sodas as beer. And, while that’s unusual within its industry, Sprecher isn’t alone among U.S. brewers that also sell soda. The dual beer and soda makers include other smaller Wisconsin brewers, as well as Chicago-based MillerCoors LLC, which has a sideline business in root beer tucked among dozens of large brands that include Miller Lite and Coors Light.

To be sure, most of the nation’s brewers, including more than 2,700 craft brewers, aren’t in the soda business. And some, such as Chicago-based Goose Island Beer Co., owned by industry giant Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, have sold their soda operations to better focus on the growing thirst for craft beer.

But, for other brewers, sodas remain a lucrative venture.

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Written by Fraz Hofer for Tempest in a Tankard

We see a similar narrative trajectory in the craft beer world. We know the broad outlines of the story. Insipid lager washes over North America like a tsunami in the post-war period, itself answering a desire for lighter beers. But then along comes a new generation of beer drinkers not content to drink marketing form over brewing substance. Hops carried the day, the more bitter and aromatic, the better.

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Profiled by Maria Devan for PGA

Pours the color of a ripe apricot with the blush on it. Hazy and almost opaque except for it does let enough light in for you to observe it’s lovely color and the bubbles that are starting their way up from the bottom. 2 fingers of white foam top the beer and last until they become a light layer of film on top.

Nose is funky with barnyard and earth. Wet damp earth. Some fruit tartness and a sour you can smell. A drop of vinegar and some overall lemon fruitiness. There is some vanilla on the nose that is like a fragrant flower that has grown in this earth and is sweetly in bloom.

Taste is outstanding. Funky, sour, citric, the embodiment of the lemon. The essence of the icy bright peel. The vinegar is not too strong. The earth and the wood come together as like is to like. The headiness of the fruit sweetness meets the light sweetness of the crisp wheat and lay a soft foundation for this dynamic beer. Sour, acidic, earthy, and with a touch of some kind of green but woody herb to round out the flavor. Dry crisp and bubbly mouthfeel.

This beer is intense. The coming together of powerful earth and a bright bit of uplifted sweetness. The shyness of the musty earth after it rains and the greeness that lies in wait for when the sun comes to shine again. The fruit is the culmination of this beer and is taken whole in it’s every aspect from sweet peel to the tartness of it’s flesh , right through to it’s final incarnation – sour and like vinegar in decay. This beer is truly a perfect wedding of elements.

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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is frequent reviewer of beer and a beer lover deluxe.