The Beer Czar's Second Annual Pumpkin Beer Tasting

This past weekend, I hosted my 2nd Annual Pumpkin Beer Tasting. This is proving to be a very fun event for me! Aside from the fact I love to get together and drink a few beers, I also, unashamedly LOVE pumpkin beer. Pumpkin beer is kind of the cool beer to hate among beer people. Given its popularity, ubiquity and the fact that just about every brewery makes a pumpkin beer, many of which are just not good at all. It's getting harder to find those truly good pumpkin beers. That is exactly why I hold this event, I'm here to help folks! I get a selection of what I think (in many cases, its just what I've heard, since I haven't tried many of them) are good examples of the style, and then ask friends and family members to rate them, blindly, so I can come up with my sort of "best of" for this year's pumpkin beers.

This year, was a smaller, more laid back affair then last years, but equally as fun. This year, we had a total of 8 new beers to try. So, I gathered them around the table, poured them some beers, and let them go to work. Here is a list of the beers we tried, in the order they scored (#1 being the highest score....)

(click on the link to learn more about that beer)

1. Southern Tier's Warlock Imperial Pumpkin Stout - Lakewood, NY
2. Epic's Fermentation without Representation's Imperial Pumpkin Porter - Salt Lake City, UT
3. Southern Tier's Pumking - Lakewood, NY
4. Four Peaks Pumpkin Porter - Tempe, AZ
5. Pike's Pub and Brewery's Pike's Harlot's Harvest - Seattle, WA
6. Grand Canyon Brewing's Pumpkin Spring's Porter Williams, AZ
7. Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale - Milton, DE
8. Unita's Punk'd - Salt Lake City, UT

This years winner

So, there you have it, the list of Beer Czar's top Pumpkin Beers for 2014! Overall, I think a pretty good list of some really good pumpkin beers! Nice to have a couple of Arizona beers in there this year too. Next year we are planning a slightly larger event, so we will have room for a few more folks. If you would like to be a part of next years event, or any other events we might have in the near future, please let me know and drop me a line at thebeerczar@gmail.com





Here is a quick video with some more pic's, and the results, set to some awesome music!

Until next time
Bottoms up my friends

The Beer Czar