Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

Brewed by Dogfish Head Brewery
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Milton, Delaware USA

Decent, but not roundly good. Comes on strong. Pumpkin flavor there, but not really clear and present.

This is one of the higher end pumpkin ales seen around and a good bet for anyone looking to learn what this style is all about. Brown orange tinged pour as wafts of nutmeg and all spice fill my nose. The regular pumpkin pie taste but also some smokiness and savoriness from the actual pumpkin in this one.

bottled, pours amber with minimal white head, light fruit aroma with hint of spices, wonderful full body taste with various levels of spice, fruit, sweet, malt, hops, good light hop lasting palate...best pumpkin

This is what a pumpkin ale should taste like. the description says it all ’’full bodied brown ale with smooth hints of pumpkin and brown sugar’’. The palate is smooth and the taste is great.

Not bad for a spiced beer. The ingredients mask the alcohol, but for the season, it well worth the wait.

12 oz bottle. A brown ale...hmmm...not really. Pours copper with a thin head. Aroma of mild spice. Flavor has a slight hint of pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon and a bit (this may sound a big strange) ’perfumey’. Strong pepper finish that sticks around for a while. The spices were a bit over the top for me. Not my favorite style, but I have had better pumpkin ales.

Pours a brown amber with no head. Aroma of nutmeg, cinnamom and brown sugar. Flavor of spice, some pumpki, with some brown sugar.

Ironically enough, as I sit here writing this review for Dogfish Head Punkin Ale, we set a new record for our area in Florida for the coldest night in October. Could this be a foreboding sign of a cold winter to come, unlike the warm winters I have enjoyed for the last few years? Hopefully not, but either way, I see many seasonal fall and winter beers in my future weeks to come. What better way to warm the body, mind, and spirit then with a masterpiece brew from near and afar.
Pours a deep amber orange and a decent head of lightly orange tinted foam tops off the brew below. The head fades into a thin blanket on top with an impressive amount of brussels lace sticking to the sides of my glass. In her nose I am caught up in an explosion of spices; ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a few others I cannot put my nose on. Lingering in the background is freshly pulped pumpkin. Ripe and rich, but not sweet like prepackaged or processed pumpkin filling. Her body is clean and smooth with a pleasant hint of weight to keep her from being too easily quaffable. The intensity of the spices I detected in the nose are in full force in her palate also, demanding that I take my time and savor each quaff in all her spiced, herbal pumpkin glory. Her weight and mouthfeel surprisingly also has a pleasant frothiness to it, preventing her from being more of a suffocating dead weight of spice. While the spices are in the forefront and everywhere else possible, her notes of fresh pumpkin are subtly hidden within her background, smoothing out the edges and balancing her palate from start to finish.
A very fresh pumpkin ale, and a different impression than what I was initially expecting in comparison to other pumpkin ales I had quaffed. On one hand, a bit too heavy on the spices, but on the other hand, as I savored my glass, I came to an understanding and fond appreciation of the spices and vegetal nature of my Dogfish Punkin Ale. A couple days ago, I had the opportunity to try her on draft, and she is definitely a pumpkin beer which wiggles her way into your heart. I look forward to enjoying another.