Drank: Squash Buckler (Fort George)

A gorgeous fire opal orange beer with a notable gourdy essence.

Until this year, pumpkin spice lattes didn't have any pumpkin in them. Neither do a lot of pumpkin beers. Turns out, our brains have tied the squash so tightly to its typical spices that the flavor we think of as pumpkin is actually a combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and clove. When we taste pumpkin without those spices, it hardly registers as pumpkin at all. In beer, unspiced gourds typically just ferment into slightly fruity sugar. Which makes the Fort George Squash Buckler popping up all over town such an accomplishment. The Astoria brewery bought whole organic pumpkins from a local farm, roasted them to caramelization over wood and tossed them in the brew kettle. Then they added…nothing. And yet, this gorgeous fire opal orange beer has a notable gourdy essence. It smells a little sweet, but has a fleshy pumpkin flavor that reminds me of the goop you scrape out, after it gets stuck to the seeds and baked. Yes, I'd rather have Southern Tier's Pumking. But they use spices in that—it's like cheating. For a pumpkin purist, Squash Buckler is the way to go.

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