Few beer styles elicit the fanfare that greets the yearly release of pumpkin ale. Regardless of brand, the beer’s traditional amber and orange hues mimic the color of autumn leaves, while the often sweet and spicy aroma conjures memories of stuffing oneself during family feasts. And the taste: a playful mix of sweet and spice that dances across the tongue, leaving bouquets of cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove.
Creatively produced, seasonal beers such as pumpkin ale are every bit as important to brewers as they are to those who enjoy them.
"Anything that brings in a new excitement is a must in any business, and with beer, as with food, people know fresh is best and seasonal means fresh," says Shawn Hagan, brewmaster at Kalamazoo’s Bravo! "In October, our seasonal Toasted Pumpkin Ale is our number two selling beer."
Not all breweries rely so heavily on seasonal beers to drive sales, but in a town that has seen more than $25 million in investment by craft brewers in 2012, each brewery in the area, large and small, puts a great deal of care and effort into crafting seasonals that keep customers coming back year in and year out.
To honor this season’s batch of Southwest Michigan pumpkin ales, A Second Round decided to host a beer tasting, where a panel of "celebrity tasters" would review a smattering of flavors from across the area.
We invited three actors, all of whom perform regularly in the area, to sample four local pumpkin beers. The panel of celebrity beer tasters was:
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Jeremy Koch: Co-founder and Artistic Director of Kalamazoo’s Farmers Alley Theatre. Jeremy has been seen on stage in such shows as:
A Few Good Men, Urinetown: The Musical and
Jane Eyre. He toured nationally, performing as Tony in
West Side Story, where he met his wife and theater co-founder, Denene Mulay-Kotch.
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Dann Sytsma: Co-Founder of improv comedy troupe Crawlspace Eviction. Sytsma also works as a chemistry instructor at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. He and his wife, Tara--who also is a Crawlspace member--are expecting their second child very soon.
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Brian Lam: Founder of Lam Creative, a company that provides written, audio, and visual content to a variety of businesses. In his spare time, he cavorts across stage as a member of Crawlspace Eviction.
Our beers for the evening included: Arcadia Ale’s Jaw Jacker, Bravo! Toasted Pumpkin, Black Owl Spooked Owl Stout and Olde Penninsula Pumpkin Ale. Other brews such as Paw Paw’s Twisted Pumpkin, Greenbush’s Unicorn Killer and Waldorf’s Candy Snatcher were unavailable at the time of our tasting.
A Second Round: Welcome.
Jeremy Koch: Thank you for having us.
Brian Lam: Dann you look terrible, you really look bad.
Dann Sytsma: This is really comfortable furniture.
The first beer of the night was a local favorite: Jaw Jacker from
Arcadia Ales. A bottle was cracked. Four small tasting glasses were filled, and so began our journey to the land of pumpkin beers.
Brewery: Arcadia Ales
Brand: Jaw Jacked
From: Battle Creek
JK: Cheers, here’s to fermented hops and barley. This is good, not super spicy, just a hint of pumpkin.
DS: Ales are not my faves, just because they tend to be a little more bitter.
ASR: You’re going to be drinking a lot of them tonight.
DS: That’s fine.
BL: Is that a little coriander in there perhaps?
ASR: Allspice and nutmeg with cinnamon.
DS: They don’t overdo the spice; it’s not overly hoppy or spicy.
BL: No, pretty smooth. I like this.
ASR: It’s not overly pumpkiny.
BL: Yeah, it’s got a hint of spice, it alludes to being a pumpkin beer but it’s not very pumpkin, which is a nice thing if you’re planning on drinking four or five. Arcadia also makes the Big Finish ale, which they served at the end of the (Kalamazoo) Marathon.
DS: I cracked open that bottle at your dad’s; I hope that wasn’t important.
BL: No, it wasn’t, whatever…I’m sure it’ll be worth something someday. It was more sentimental, it didn’t have any monetary value. It was priceless, not implying that there was no price attached, just no specific monetary value.
DS: When people tell me something is priceless, I take that it has no value. It’s like garbage on the side of the road. It's priceless, there is no price on this.
All tasters were in agreement: The beer was good but the flavor was a bit mild. Everyone would have liked to have seen actual pumpkin used in the brewing process, but at around $11 a six pack it was totally worth buying again.
Next up was a newcomer to the Southwest Michigan beer scene: Black Owl Brewing. Not yet available to the public,
Black Owl Cafe of Kalamazoo will be serving a variety of in-house micro-brews once all the official paperwork and licensing has been approved. No timetable has been set for this.
Brewery: Black Owl
Brand: Spooked Owl Stout
From: Kalamazoo
DS: Ohhhh, this is a dark one. What is this?
BL: We have a winner already! The nose on this just kicks you in the ding-dings if you know what I’m saying.
ASR: This was brewed using Kalamazoo Coffee Company Pumpkin spice coffee.
DS: That is amazing.
BL: Wow, I like it.
JK: This is good stuff.
BL: It just lassos your vulva and pulls it straight into the glass. Isn’t the vulva the thing that hangs down in your throat?
DS: That’s a uvula.
BL: That’s what it is. Let me re-do that for on the record.
DS: This has so much going on, it’s crazy.
JK: Like a Lady Gaga costume.
DS: I would equate this to a Colombian Lady Gaga.
BL: I love the color of that. It’s absolutely fantastic. I think it has hints of chocolate. It’s like a pumpkin latte; there’s almost a little bit of creaminess to it.
Hands down, everyone’s favorite beer of the night. The only downside is that the Black Owl’s micro-brewing license may not be finalized until well after pumpkin season ends, meaning this beer may not be available to the public anytime soon.
The second smallest brewery was up next.
Bravo! on Portage Road supplied us with Toasted Pumpkin, a crisp, amber-hued ale.
Brewery: Bravo!
Brand: Toasted Pumpkin
From: Kalamazoo
DS: This is Bravo? Well bravo, this is good beer.
BL: Is this their pumpkin beer? I’m getting raspberry. There has yet to be one that is super pumpkiny.
ASR: Is that molasses?
BL: Brown Sugar.
JK: I’m going with Brown Sugar.
BL: Great Deangelo song; It’s responsible for my first daughter.
OK, next up:
Brewery: Olde Peninsula
Brand: Pumpkin Ale
From: Kalamazoo
BL: Gentleman we have pumpkin!
DS: This is pumpkin.
JK: Pure Pumpkin.
DS: The pumpkin just sent one of those grappling hooks up into my septum and pulled it down into the glass.
JK: This is by far the most pumpkin.
BL: This is a 4.3 PPG. (Pumpkins per glass.)
DS: I like this, it's local.
BL: This is amazingly good.
DS: O.P. is like one of those places that are good, but it’s so casually good.
And with that we concluded the official business for the evening, moving on to more serious drinking and juvenile banter.
BL: Should we recap? Closing thoughts?
DS: I really liked the Black Owl.
ASR: I think the two best beers here are the two smallest breweries. Black Owl and Old Peninsula.
With the end of the official tasting portion of the evening, the panel continued to drink in order to make certain that their initial instincts and reactions on the presented beers were accurate and thoughtful. Here is a sampling of what took place as the evening progressed:
BL: The Rolling Stones are named after a Muddy Waters song.
ASR: Muddy Waters is named after a brackish liquid.
DS: Brackish; that’s one of my favorite adjectives. Ahhh, this is brackish.
JK: You know where Duran Duran got their name from?
ASR: Barbarella.
JK: Starring Jane Fonda, what a trippy film.
DS: I don’t know that movie.
BL: Dann’s got a pop culture blind spot that extends from the early 1980’s to the early 1990’s.
DS: Well, 1976 through 1995.
Jeremy Martin is a freelance writer. A graduate of Western Michigan University, he lives in Portage with his wife. Follow him @secondwavebeer on Twitter.
Photos by Jeremy Martin.