Southern Tier Brewing Co.’s: Pumking Ale

Rating 9.5/10

I really enjoy beer, that often makes it difficult to rate it. Anyway, this beer was delicious! This time of year is my favorite for beers, the fall season has the best seasonals (in my humble opinion). Pumpkin beer being the top of the list on the seasonal list! I have had a few this year, and I will write about another later. The pumpkin is a unique orange color, I assume given by the pumpkin brewed with the beer. There is a high degree of malts used in this beer, and the bottle says that there are hops, however, the hops play an extremely minor part in this beer. The malts and pumpkin are the highlight! The pumpkin adds most significantly to the bouquet of the ale! The beer smells overtly of Pumpkin Pie! The beer tastes very malty, with a strong malt and brown sugar flavor, with background hints of cinnamon or cardamon along with nutmeg (as one might expect in pumpkin pie!)

The beer boasts an 8.6% abv! This is above the average for beer, but still within the normal realm. Also if you have a chance to grab this beer, and have a stemmed beer glass or a white wine glass, that would be ideal, otherwise pour and enjoy! It should go without saying but this beer would go excellent with pumpkin pie, or pumpkin bread! Anything that has a autumn spices as a highlight flavor will go amazingly with this beer. I hope you have a chance to grab this beer and enjoy it! Bottoms up!

Mississippi Mud

 Rating 6/10

About a week ago my wife presented me with an early B-day present. A beer glass set, that included six different kinds of beer glass: The Classic Pilsner glass, English Pub glass, Belgium Ale glass (stemmed so cool!), Craft Pub glass, Porter/Stout glass (also stemmed), and the Wheat Beer glass. I didn’t have any beer on hand that would go in one of the more specialty glasses, so I decided next time I was at the grocery store I would pick something special up. I ended up with this Black and Tan for two reasons. 1) I’ve been wanting to try it for a while, 2) it was on sale! I ended up using the Porter/Stout glass, which is pictured with the beer in it. This beer is a porter/pilsner mix, hence the name Black and Tan. For the first few sips I think I enjoyed the novelty of the glass and was excited to be using it. After awhile I realized that this beer lacked the flavor that I expected. The size of the jug allowed for three glasses of beer. By the end of the third I decided I didn’t like it at all.

Mississippi Mud: Black & Tan does not provide much of a head when poured, the color is darker and actually you can tell that it’s a mix of two beers. Sad to say the beer reminded me of the one time I had Coors light (a night I still have nightmares about.) I believe that beer tastes is all subjective. Each person will like something different. I would recommend this to someone just starting out and wanting to move out of ‘light’ beers. This has a safe flavor for that. It’s actually better than Coors, which is why I say it’s a good starter beer if you’re moving more toward the craft beer style.

I’m hoping to write more on this blog again. I may recruit some guest writers. If you’re interested in being a guest writer, let me know via the comment section. It was also suggested by a co-worker (who loves to hear me talk about beer) that I should write a bit about the history of beer, as well as compare older beer blogs (from my first beer blog) to my current tastes and thoughts on those beers. Look forward to more, I know do! Bottoms up!