OFallon Pumpkin Ale

Brewed by OFallon Brewery
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
OFallon, Missouri USA

Strong spice presence in the aroma, tons of nutmeg and clove, not overbearing at all though. Pumkin beer flavor=nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, very faint pumpkin everything you would expect. Little suprised at this overall though. Yeah it’s pretty standard across the board, but not really 3.1/3.2 bad.

From a twelve ounce bottle purchased at "Liquor Dir ect" in Covington, Kentucky - This one pours a orang-amber hued liquid with very little in the way of a foam head and a pumpkiny (SURPRISE!) aroma, although the spices were somewhat subdued to my nose. Tastewise, I think this beer suffers from having a thin lager base, and that bitterness at the finish was somewhat off-putting.

Bottle rating. Dark orange with a fully diminishing white head. Spices come through in the nose. Cinnamon, nutmeg, the typical. Stick sweet palate. No hops presence. Somewhat thin. Not terrible, but by no means great.

EXCELLENT taste but disappointing in the nose and sight. Tingley on the tongue with a spicey finish.

Amber color. Smell of hops, malt, clove, cinnamon and pumpkin. Taste of hops, pumpkin, malt, spice, citrus, celery and cheese??? Acidic bitterness at the end.

Pours a pinkish brown color, crystal clear. There’s almost no head, but there are lots of vigorous bouncing bubbles like soda. Scent is a bit spicy, but mostly generic and yeasty. There’s not a lot of pumpkin there. The flavor is a lot like pumpkin pie -- more spice than pumpkin, but it’s sweet. The finish is more of the same flavor with a bit of alcohol warmth. There’s not a whole lot of complexity to this beer, but I like it a lot. It’s easy to drink, and tastes like pie. ’Twas pretty cheap, too, as far as tasty beers go.

OFallon brewery has really gotten to the bloody, still beating heart of Halloween. Above all else, Halloween is a holiday celebrated between neighbors – on a level more local than anything else. There is no national governing body of ghouls and witches, no federal board of horrific bureaucratic affairs (though one may argue all bureaucratic affairs are horrific) and really no supervising body higher than a collective neighborhood. That’s why all the best Halloween costumes, decorations, recipes and other parts of the festivities either appear to be crafted by children or made with incredulous craftsmanship. The gray area of mass produced commercial goods is a burdensome sludge that, yes, upholds the holiday spirit but misses the true vigor behind the ethos of Halloween. As for the two types of genuine Halloween celebration, OFallon has, in appearance (for that is what Halloween is all about) chosen the former, where humble, meager and usually slapdash decorations invoke a real localized sense of this most macabre holiday. You see, it’s all about finding that simple smiling Jack O’ Lantern instead of a plastic doppelganger, or looking up and seeing a dozen tissue paper and twine ghosts dangling from a tree instead of looking down on an inflatable and obese version of the same ethereal spirit. And with their label OFallon has fallen in with the likes of all the neophyte decorators out there who outfit our suburban enclaves with what has become a most marvelous version of an already marvelous holiday. A simple black and orange motif graces the bottle of this simple pumpkin beer, offering hardly any more explanation than “Pumpkin Ale with spices”. It took a serious investigative effort to trace the brewer, and with this minimalist effort and true-to-the-roots décor the pumpkin ale, one day prior to Halloween, has won me over. As for the actual beer, it is an average pumpkin ale. But its lowly status is raised with the careful attention to a lack of details it has managed. In other words, this beer has made an effort to preserve Halloween. For the sake of readers I should make some mention of its sensory attributes: a redder beer than most pumpkin ales with a corpulent skin white head (Ah, how apropos!) and a nose abundant with clove and nutmeg, salt and Coca-cola, brown sugar, roasted pumpkin puree, turkey and dashes of cinnamon all in a cool, deep olfactory sensation. The palate is nice and heavy matching well with the flavors. Malts co-hosts with the spices, and a hint of pumpkin rind, to make a deep and tingling taste that, while far from pumpkin pie, makes for a nice fall flavor. But for me it is the spirit of the OFallon brew that cackles with the true mystique of this day. Happy Halloween!

12oz. bottle. Sweet and appropriately spicy aroma, the nutmeg and clove most apparent with the cinnamon playing more of a supporting role, and combined with aspects of pumpkin, light caramel and fainter amounts of citric hop and toast. Mostly clear light-medium orange color (what else?) with a slight, subsiding head. Flavor is sweet, fruity and spicy throughout, the malts somewhat sugary, combining with a good amount of spiciness, again noticeable pumpkin and a slight tangy, citric bitterness towards the finish. Somewhat thin on the palate with a light-medium body. Happy Halloween!