I love autumn in Michigan. Aside from the usual suspects (colors, cooler temperatures), it's also the time for cider and ... pumpkins, in both food and drinks! Homemade pumpkin syrup for our cold-brewed coffees, pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, ... One of the seasonal beers I always look forward to is pumpkin ale. So we noticed a 6-pack of New Holland's Ichabod Ale. Having liked other beers by New Holland and seeing how this one has a pretty decent score on Beer Advocate, we decided to try it out last night.
What do you pour a pumpkin ale in? The answer, of course, is a glass. There's no consensus on what goes best with this style (tulip, pint, ...), so I went for one of my pseudo-Hoegaarden glasses. Here it's posing next to what I hoped would be a prominent feature in the taste!
What do you pour a pumpkin ale in? The answer, of course, is a glass. There's no consensus on what goes best with this style (tulip, pint, ...), so I went for one of my pseudo-Hoegaarden glasses. Here it's posing next to what I hoped would be a prominent feature in the taste!
The head was about a finger thick and disappeared pretty quickly. The lacing was fair, about to be expected for such a beer. The color was a nice orange tint, hinting at the pumpkin in it.
I took a sip and the pumpkin flavor just jumped out to me and ... Oh wait, that's what I wanted to taste. I believe Ichabod must have dropped his head before they mashed him and the grains. New Holland, where's my pumpkin flavor? This tastes more like a brown ale than the seasonal I was looking for. Color me not impressed. It's not a bad beer, but definitely not what I was expecting.
It's fine, I'll make one myself this coming weekend. At least I know I still have a lot to learn, but I do expect more from an established brewery.
I took a sip and the pumpkin flavor just jumped out to me and ... Oh wait, that's what I wanted to taste. I believe Ichabod must have dropped his head before they mashed him and the grains. New Holland, where's my pumpkin flavor? This tastes more like a brown ale than the seasonal I was looking for. Color me not impressed. It's not a bad beer, but definitely not what I was expecting.
It's fine, I'll make one myself this coming weekend. At least I know I still have a lot to learn, but I do expect more from an established brewery.