The End Of The Pumpkins

Happy Halloween, fellow beer lovers. I hope you are all having a fantastic fall. Here is a new seasonal combo that should provide a nice little surprise for your spooky season. 21^st Amendment Brewery has been on my radar a good deal over the last two years. I first had their Back In Black IPA on a trip to NYC. Then the ever drinkable Bitter American Pale Ale showed up in town. Then Monk’s Blood. Then Fireside Chat. Then Marooned On Hog Island. Then Spring Saison. All very solid brews.
To begin, my only negative about the brewery is that they are now offering their seasonal selections in 4-packs of cans, and they typically aren’t cheap. The can quad box I’m discussing here was $10, although quite a few breweries (Green Flash, Great Lakes, Dogfish Head) have gone to seasonal 4-packs, so we’d better get used to it.
Now on shelves, He Said He Said. A novel little box of Halloween treats. And, I do mean treats as multiple. The container of He Said He Said is actually a pair each of two different beers.
The beers are a collaboration with Elysian Brewing, makers of several beers in the Nuevo-pumpkin style, the pumpkin kings, and a brewery I was all about at this year’s GABF. The brewers got a little wild: “He Said let’s brew a dark beer with pumpkin and spices and put it in a light colored can. He Said let’s brew a light beer with pumpkin and spices and put it in a dark colored can. So they did both and produced a pumpkin beer collaboration like no other: two black pumpkin beers and two white pumpkin beers, together in one box.”
With some of the coolest packaging I’ve seen in a long time, He Said He Said gives a nod to yin-yang, Jekyll-Hyde, dark-light dynamic, made in fall colors, and a tip of the hat to the two differing beers, with pumpkin in common, and the two breweries at hand.
First off, He Said, the Belgian-Style Tripel ale brewed with pumpkin and spices (tarragon and galangal, a kind of ginger). Pours cloudy golden orange, with a dusting of cream on top. The beer smells of yeast and spice and, get this, pumpkin. Decent tripel flavors cross the tongue, followed by ginger spice, finishing with that familiar pumpkin taste and the unusual bitter finish, somewhat licorice like. He Said Belgian is creamy with a tinge of carbonation spice. The pumpkin and spice works well with the style, and a nice update on the pumpkin ale.
Next, He Said, the Baltic-Style Porter lager (!) brewed with pumpkin and Vietnamese cinnamon and ground caraway. Nearly pitch black in the glass with a medium head of tan foam, this beer is dryer and roasted, with more cinnamon in the nose. More carbonated than most Baltic Porters, the mouthfeel is thinner too. The spices give a tang that follows the roasted malt nature, with little pumpkin to be found. Still, a tasty, if not somewhat strange result from the darker He Said.
A very clever and original collaboration from 21^st Amendment and Elysian, these are the unique little one-off events that make craft beer one of the best food movements of our day. And with that, He Said so long pumpkin beers, He Said it’s been fun. Goodbye to the fall beers, bring forth and enjoy the winter brews.
Cheers.
Gene’s Haufbrau has at more than 200 beers in bottles or on tap. While they don’t have every beer the Beer Snob writes about, they probably have most. Gene’s is located at 817 Savannah Hwy. 225-GENE. E-mail the Beer Snob at publisher@westof.net.