Bumpkin (Barrel Aged)
Country Boy Brewing

 

 

 

 

Although Halloween and Thanksgiving are long behind us, the time is right for those pumpkin ales, which have been hibernating in Pappy Van Winkle bourbon barrels to make a grand entrance as a welcomed winter warmer.

The beer pours a tawny brown-orange color with deep amber highlights- it's easy to read the shades of pumpkin and oak into the beer's gaze. The beer is illuminated through a mild haze when back lit. A dainty but creamy ivory froth caps the beer somberly and struggles to retain its structure toward the end of the session.

Caramel, pumpkin pie spices and graham cracker breadiness all swirl in the nose for a scent that's similar to praline. Cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and barrel oak provides a complex and rich scent. Light starch, maple, and mild oak vanillin and vinous character keeps the robust and complex scents coming.

The well melded flavors of dry graham crackers, praline sweetness, and bourbon-infused oak gives the beer a mature, old ale taste that's equipped with mild vinous, nearly wine-like taste. Its tangy sweetness wraps around the taste of pumpkin pie spices and softer chocolate. Low in bitterness, the rich sweetness is balanced by wood tannin and its own sheer complexities.

Medium bodied from start to finish, the beer's starchy cream textures upholds the beer's structure yet is driven by its succulent residual sweetness. Wavering ever so slightly, its slow transcendence to a warm and spicy finish- the beer lingers into the next sip like fine port or brandy. Slight woodish tannin and powdery "Pappy" signatures gives the beer one last sultry aspect of texture.

What was once a formidable pumpkin ale is now a sweeter, more complex, and savory winter ale that soothes the taste buds and warms the stomach. But you've got to have an appreciation of sweeter ale and less dry barrel qualities.