Pumpkins, Punkins and Pumkings

I had my first new pumpkin beer of the season this weekend. By new, I mean it was a pumpkin beer that I had never tried before. It was Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale. (Note to reader. If you click the link and want to try the beer, you should know that the label does not look like this anymore.) It wasn't my first pumpkin beer of the season though. I had one of my favorites, Southern Tier Pumking, a few weeks ago. "Pumpkin beer comes out in August?", you think. Well some of them do, but you may be shocked that the Pumking was actually available in July along with a couple other pumpkin beer varieties. Each year, it seems that pumpkin beer comes out earlier and earlier. An employee at a liquor store that I frequent in Wilmington, joked that she is waiting for the year that it becomes a spring seasonal beer.

This is one of the most disappointing things going on in the beer industry today. The early release of seasonals. It makes it hard to actually get a beer during the season it was meant to be drank in. For beer geeks like me it's not a problem. I'm always in liquor stores looking for my next beer. Even if I don't buy anything, I check to see what's in. So for me and many others like me. We pick up a bottle of our favorite pumpkin beers to drink in July, August and September and drink it, but we also pick up another one to put away for Halloween or Thanksgiving, because you really should try these beers with caramel candy or pumpkin pie.

The problem comes when we talk, type, chat and blog about these beers and beer drinkers who aren't in the category of beer geek want to try them. These are the people who run into the store and buy the case of beer that they knew they wanted when they left their house and then run home and crack open that favorite beer. They rarely look for something new except at certain times of the year or just every once in a while. So these people here us praising pumpkin beers and then they stop in the liquor store to pick up one of the pumpkin beers before heading to grandma's house for Thanksgiving dinner and they are nowhere to be found. They might be able to find some of the pumpkin beers that no true beer geek wants like Anheuser-Busch In Bev-made Michelob Jacks Pumpkin Spice Ale and they try what tastes like a spice rack and wonder what we're yapping about. Sure. No pumpkin beer is something to be drank often or in mass quantity. You have a few in the fall and you've had your fill for a year, or at least nine months. But a truly well-crafted pumpkin beer is a great treat and the casual beer drinking is missing out because of the early release of these beers.

It's the same thing with winter and Christmas beers. You can get them in November or earlier and then you go to stock up on some red and green bottles for the company coming over between Christmas and New Year's Eve and there is none to be found. I don't know how many people have asked me where they can get a case of the Mad Elf I am serving them in late December and I have to tell them, nowhere, because I and other beer geeks bought our cases in November.

I feel breweries are missing out on a great way to spread the word on great craft beers. Casual beer drinkers can become beer geeks, but they never will if they can't get the beers that all their beer geek friends are raving about at a time of year that they are willing to splurge a little and to try something new.

Drink it in.

Finally

I had big plans for this blog. I was going to do a second award article about the worst beers I tried last year, the coolest bottles and the best beer trips and destinations. The problem was planning it all and trying to make it perfect. The next thing I was going to write about was the top albums of 2008. I was going to post the list I came up with based on an equation I used to sort out the top albums after looking at about seven different end-of-year music lists. Then I was going to list my own favorite albums of last year and songs too. That didn't happen because in an effort to make everything perfect and finding the perfect time to blog I never got around to doing any of it. It is now almost six months since my last post and now that information is kind of pointless. I need to stop thinking and start blogging. So here is a very abbreviated version of it all.

Budweiser Clamato was the very worst thing I drank last year. If you don't know, it's a mixture of beer, tomato juice, clam juice, lime and salt. The large, 24 oz. can reads, "the perfect combination." I agree. It's the perfect combination if you want to know what it's like to vomit backwards.

The coolest bottle was almost definitely Rogue Double Dead Guy Ale. I mean, what's cooler than a 22 oz. Red bottle with skulls on it?

One of the best beer trips my then girlfriend and now fianceé went on was to the Goggle Works studio in Reading, PA. They had an exhibit about the artwork that goes into the packaging of beer. They showed the progress from sketch to actual label, or six pack carrier for some brands. For others their were original paintings that were used for labels and even some hand-carved tap handles. It might sound a little boring, but we're both graphic designers and it was very cool. Plus we ate at Canal Street Pub, one of the best places I ever had a beer. They had things I never see on tap, they had the proper glassware for just about every style of beer you could imagine and the bartender was very knowledgeable. They had Rodenbach Grand Cru on tap so I ordered it with my dinner, a sushi tuna steak salad. The bartender brought me over a glass of water halfway through, knowing what a powerfully flavored beer I was drinking. Then when it came to dessert the bartender got into a pleasant argument with me about what we should drink. We were splitting a chocolate peanut butter cake or pie and I was ordering a Youngs Double Chocolate Stout. He agreed it would go nice with the cake, but knew I had, tried both beers I was drinking that day before and he was insistent that I try something I never had before. The beer he described sounded great and I knew from the style that it too would be great with dessert, but I had to let the poor guy down. The reason I ordered the Youngs was because I had to drive and knew it was low in alcohol, and the beer he was offering had a much higher ABV. He understood but looked disappointed as he went back to the others at the bar, talking them into trying something new. We need to get back to that place. (Sidenote: we tried last month, but the bar was closed on Monday for the 4th of July holiday. We were very disappointed.)

The top 5 albums according to a combination of a bunch of different lists were:

5. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

4. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

3. Lil' Wayne - The Carter III

2. TV on the Radio - Dear Science

1. Coldplay - Viva la Vida

Some of my favorites, in no particular order, were: My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges, Kings of Leon - Only By The Night, The Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark, Atmosphere - When Life Gives You Lemons and The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely.

Best song by far was Hayes Carll - "She Left Me For Jesus".

So that about does it for last year. Maybe sometime soon, I'll get to this year.

Drink it in.