Tasting: September 5, 2011
Style: Fruit (Pumpkin)

Here it is Labor Day weekend and another summer has come and gone by way too fast. We bypassed a number of vacation opportunities in order to put our cash to finishing our garage and that’s made for a summer of some emptiness. Now that the garage is done, I’m really looking forward to a return to normalcy and hope to make up for vacation getaways in 2012. For now, I’m really looking forward to my favorite season. Nothing like the crisp fall days, apple picking, foliage, Halloween and Thanksgiving. I mentioned in my post on Southern Tier’s Pumking that I hadn’t had a pumpkin ale in twenty-five years and here I am with another a couple of weeks later.

Harpoon has a series of beers called UFO — which stands for UnFiltered Object. I like an unfiltered beer. It’s just filled with the floating remnants of ingredients — be it hops, grain hulls and yeast. This one however looks pretty clear — only the ever so slight hint of haze. Smell is of pumpkin and nutmeg. This is an ale that is dominated by the spices that go along with pumpkin – allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Very little pumpkin here. Has some bitterness to it – but the mouthfeel is thin. This is why I haven’t had a pumpkin ale in twenty-five years — 68 points.