Jolly Pumpkin E.S. Bam

Yellow brown pour with a fluffy white head. Sour woody and spicy aroma. Fruity notes with lots of herbal hops. Bretty yeast flavor with citrus and wood. Lots of bitter hops to finish.

Pours a dark hazy chestnut brown/ orange-amber color with a thick frothy off-white head that has excellent retention. This isn’t giving way at all. I mean it barely settles into a thick cap that lasts throughput leaving large chunks of soapy lacing that practically coat the glass. Sweet citrus aroma with lots of orange peel and some nice chocolate and caramel malt. Tart earthy notes with some nice peppery spice, more citrus, dark cherries, light fruit, oak and vanilla. This is a very complex aroma. Let’s hope the flavo is the same. Nice chewy full body with some art sour oak/wood flavor. This slightly puckering earthy taste is a perfect compliment to the citrus peel notes and earthy hops. Once again, there is a prominent orange peel presence with some soft carbonation and a nice malt backbone providing excellent balance. The aftertaste of this beer makes me salivate for another sip. Extremely quaffable. Another excellent offering from the folks at Jolly Pumpkin.

750 ml bottle. Lively, reddish amber body with a big, foamy off-white head. Aroma is refreshing Bretty. Flavor is dry malty, balanced bitter and fine sourish finish. Well made.

Bottle from de Bierkoning. Hazy copper with a thick creamy head. Sour fruit aroma, lots of brettanomyces. Slightly sweeter in the mouth, yet dry and sour flavours in the lead. Fizzy. Starts aggressive in the nose, but ends up a mild version of Orval.

Pours a dark-tinted burnt orange with orange highlights and the biggest monstrous head I’ve ever had to deal with. No skin oils would keep that sucker down, so I resorted to scooping it out with a spoon (I used a New Belgium goblet, perhaps it wasn’t wide enough). Aroma is funky as expected with JP; notes of earth, oak, mustard, mushrooms, and cheese. Maybe SLIGHT toffee. Tastes of oak, earth, bitter cheese, grassy hops, with a little more earthy malt presence than funky Belgian beers typically have. Finishes extremely dry, earthy and bitter. A little bigger bodied than regular Bam, carbonation doesn’t actually feel to high, considering the enormous head. It’s pretty good, but damn, it’s too dry for me!

My sink drain tried to spit it back at me. After reading the other reviews, I am not sure that I got a bad bottle but this was foul.

Pours turbid coppery with huge white head that kept reappearing and made wonderful, La Chouffe Houblonish shapes. Nose was hopcitrus, yeasty spice, florals. Tasted very dru, very hoppy, floral, spicy, and citric, and was very bier de gardish in smell, flavor, and mouthfeel.

Bottle - Pours hazy amber with a big, frothy head. Smells really bretty with a lot of citrus. Taste is dry and bitter, with some oak, grapefruit, and lemon. Has a dry, grassy hop finish -- a little too much for my tastes. Real bubblly and medium bodied. There’s just too much dryness to this one -- the citrus helps a bit, but it’s too one-sided.