1st Annual Pumpkin Beer Tasting

The Beer Czar pumpkin keg!

This passed weekend, I had the pleasure of co-hosting a pumpkin beer tasting with my good friend Masked Blogster! The event was even recorded by the Masked Blogsters podcast, Maskerpiece Theatre, Hear what people thought about each beer, and some witty banter between Liger and Masked Blogster. You can listen to the podcast here... I even jumped on the mic from time to time to give some insight, and ad what I could to what was going on.
The event was small, friendly and laid back. We tasting a total of 7 pumpkin beers, blindly. Then the participants ranked each of the beers, and at the end of the night, we tallied up the scores to come up with a list "top pumpkin beers" to recommend to you all!

Masked Blogster 

We had a panel of six tasters, grading the beer on a scale of 1 to 5, in the areas of  appearance, aroma, taste, mouthfeel, and overall. They gave each area a grade of 1 being the worst, 5 being the best, and added up the scores for each beer. We later entered those scores into a spread sheet, which averaged up the scores, and ranked them in order of highest to lowest scores, giving us a 1st through 7th place.

Bobby and Mrs Blogster getting started

So without further ado, I will go over the list of beers we tried, in the order we tried them, along with a few notes about each one that the attendee's had to say, then I will give you the rank in which each beer fell. Just a quick note, if you want to read more about the beers flavors, I provided a link to the Beeradvocate reviews for each beer, just clink the link on the beer name, and it will take you to those reviews. OK, here we go...

Daniell giving her thoughts one of the beers

1. Shipyard Pumpkinhead, Portland Maine. Pumpkin Ale, 4.7% abv. For the first beer of the evening, was described as "light in color, but smooth", "nice aroma", "subtle pumpkin-iness" "sweet" and "too sweet" , and even a "love it"!

2. Wasatch Pumpkin Seasonal Ale, Wasatch Brewing/Utah Brewers Collaborative 4% abv. Terms ranging from  "more cinnamon and spice then pumpkin", "overall, quite good", "weird taste", "subtle pumpkin, enjoyable spiceyness" all the way to "blah, not a fan at all".


3. Pumpkick, New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO, 6.0% abv. Seemed to be a popular beer at the time of the tasting, people stating "pleasant finish" and "it leaves a great after taste", and some less enthusiastic "better then #2" and "not my favorite".

4. Fall Hornin', Anderson Valley Brewing Company, Booneville, CA 6.0% abv. This was the only beer we tried in a can, and it seemed to go over well. Heard things like "a little bitter", "more like a red ale", "really good finish", "smells awesome" and even a "loved it, favorite so far!".

5. Small Batch Pumpkin Harvest Ale, Tommyknocker Brewing Company, Idaho Springs CO, 5% abv. "Smells of caramel and chocolate", "looks good, smells great...", "..getting a lot of coffee in this one", and some "light on flavor" and even a "watery taste" and "thin mouthfeel"

Mrs Czar, not impressed!

6. Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin, Pugsley's Signature Series, Shipyard Brewing, Portland ME, 9% abv. This one had the widest range of comments by far. Seems the group either just loved this beer, and just absolutely hated it. Most terms were either "awful", "yuck" "horrible flavor" to "wow, best so far" to a "this is awesome!". This one it seems you'll have to try for yourself to figure it out! (note, it was one of my favorites of the evening as well)

MB and Liger giving the play by play

7. Peaceful Pumpkin, Mudshark Brewing Company, Lake Havasu City, Arizona 5.2% abv, Our only local Arizona beer of the evening. Not sure if it was tasting fatigue, or the late hour, but reaction to this one was a little muted, and not very enthusiastic, but it wasn't bad either. Had a hard time gauging this one at the time of the tasting.


After the tastings was wrapped up, I tallied up the votes, and here are the results, in the order they scored, and the scores they received.

The line up!

Beer Name                                      Score

1. New Belgium Pumpkick,              16.33

2. Mudshark Peaceful Pumpkin        15.83

3. Anderson Valley's Fall Hornin'      15.5

4. Shipyard's Pumpkinhead               14.33

5. Wasatch Pumpkin Seasonal          14.00

6. Tommyknocker Small Batch         13.67

7. Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin          12.37

The group!

All in all, I think it was a pretty successful event, and we had a ton of fun! The event was recorded by the Masked Blogsters podcast, I will post a link to the podcast here as soon as it is posted! Hear what people thought about each beer, and some witty banter between Liger and Masked Blogster. I even jumped on the mic from time to time to give some insight, and ad what I could to what was going on.

Look forward to more tastings to come from the Masked Blogster and I. I am thinking maybe  "The First Annual Ugly sweater and Christmas beer tasting"??? Has a nice ring to it....

If you have an idea for a tasting, or would like to host a tasting, please contact us at thebeerczar@gmail.com and we will make those arrangements!

For a complete look at all the photos of this event, check out The Beer Czar on Facebook here, and like us while you are there!!!    (link to photo album)


Until next time
Bottoms up my friends

The Beer Czar

S.L.I.F.!!! (Sorry Liver, it's Friday!)

Happy Friday to you all! We've made it through yet another week, and for that, congrats, you deserve a

beer, you should probably get yourself one, right now!

I didn't have anything real pressing or interesting to share with you that warranted a single post of its own, but I did have a number of useful tidbits and info I wanted to share, so I figured I would just wrap them all up in a pretty, single package, and share them all with you at once. I might even make this a regular Friday thing, or at least semi regular, we shall see.

Who wants a great Taco, and a good time???
A reminder, tomorrow, Saturday the 14th, don't miss the Rockin Taco Street Festival at El Palacio in Chandler (on Gilbert and the 202). Just note, the contest noted in that post is now closed.

Are you a fan of white chocolate?

Good news for lovers of Sonoran Brewing Company's White Chocolate Ale. This wonderful, unique Arizona favorite is now available in 6 packs!! So look for it at your favorite beer store any day now!

Almost pumpkin beer season!
I know its hard here in Arizona to be thinking of fall beers and pumpkin ales already when its still in the 100's, but its that time of year again (in fact, I've been seeing fall beers in stores for weeks now). As is normally the case, I get a lot of folks asking me this time of year for my recommendations for good pumpkin beers. Well, we will be doing a pumpkin beer tasting coming up very soon ( the 1st Annual Pumpkin Beer Tasting featuring The Masked Blogster will be coming up!! Details to come!), but in the mean time, here is a pretty solid list of some great pumpkin beers.....Top 10 Pumpkin Beers. The list is a very solid one, I will disagree with just one on the list. My apologies to all my Maine faithful, but I think Pumpkinhead by Shipyard is a below average pumpkin beer at best. Buffalo Bills is a better option in my opinion. Aside from that, 9 solid beers!

Seriously brilliant!

Must have Tailgating gadgets for the beer lover!
As is always the case, the fine folks at Keg Works have come up with another great list. This one, is ""10 Tools for Tailgating" and, well, there is some great stuff on the list! My favorite, and its so friggin brilliant in its simplicity, is the "Go Plate"! Seriously, how many problems does this one simple innovation solve? Just awesome!








We want you!!!
Do you have a favorite brewery/brew pub? A favorite beer you want everyone to know about? Do you have a fun or interesting story to tell folks about a trip to a brewery, or having a great beer after a long hike? We want you to share it with us! We are looking for guest contributors to The Beer Czar! You can write about anything you want, as long as it is just somewhat beer related. Funny, serious, informative, it can be any, or all of those things. If you are interested, please drop me a line at thebeerczar@gmail.com with some details, and we will get you posted here on The Beer Czar! We would love to have you! Check out a few of our past guest contributors!

A Look at Colorado - contributed by an old family friend, Jon
A Short Tour of Washington Brewery's - contributed from my good friend Daniell
Touring Sam Adams - contributed by my good friend (and Daniell's husband) Bobby

So please, if you have some fun beer stories or whatever, please, share them! (if you can include photos, that would be great, but if you don't have any, not a problem)


That's about all for this first edition of "SLIF", hope to bring you more in the future!

Have a safe and happy weekend everyone
Until next time
Bottoms up my friends

The Beer Czar

Make a Keg out of a pumpkin!

OK, file this under one of coolest Halloween party ideas ever! Make a keg out of a pumpkin! OK, so its not really a true keg, more of a vessel to serve beer, but still, this is pretty cool! check this out!

I'm thinking of doing this with a good pumpkin ale, or brown ale this year while I sit out front, and eat chili and corn bread and hand out candy! Who wants to going us???? Come on over!

If anyone out there trys this, by all means, let me know, and send me some pictures of it, I would love to hear about (and see) it!

Bottoms up my friends!

The Beer Czar