Imperial Pumpkin
2SP Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

 

2SP Brewing Company "Imperial Pumpkin"
16 fl. oz. can coded "08/19/22 09:57 1774-75" and sampled on 10/27/22
$5.29 @ Total Wine & More, Cherry Hill, NJ

Notes via stream of consciousness: The Imperial Pumpkin has a nice label with a headless man walking down a street of row homes holding a jack-o-lantern under one arm and a glass of raised beer in the other. It's labeled at "7.1% ALC BY VOL". A massive head caps a hazy dark chestnut brown body with glowing orange highlights at the base of the glass. As expected there's pumpkin spice in the nose. I'm mainly getting allspice and cinnamon. On to the taste... it tastes like gingerbread or a slightly burnt carrot cake. It's got that dark brown sugar and roasted edge bread thing going on. Obviously there's some ginger, but what else is there. I'm thinking nutmeg, and perhaps some mace which is the skin around the actual nutmeg. It's a similar flavor but a little softer. There's a little bit of colve there as well. It's biscuity, lightly caramelish, molasses-like, and a touch nutty. I quite like it. The alcohol doesn't show, but at 7.1% I'm not really surprised although it's probably helping the spices to dry out the finish where it ends up tasting like an Ivin's Spiced Wafer. Well, better than an Ivin's Spiced Wafer in my opinion, and you won't break your teeth drinking this! The head settled down and I topped it up, and I'm about halfway through it now. I've still got a very thin but solid surface covering, and the lacing the's left behind is very nice. In the mouth it's medium bodied and lightly dextrinous, and fairly smooth with a fine-bubbled carbonation ~ keeping in mind that I brought up a very large head at first which released a lot of the CO2. All in all I'm impressed by this. It's got a lot more depth of character than most "pumpkin beers" and yet it's not overdone. I know I say this about a lot of pumpkin beers but I think this one might be my new favorite. It's October 27th and I promised my next door neighbor that we'd be open for business on Halloween night so I'd better get out there and find at least a few of these to help me get through the night.
Review #8,360

 

 

 

Dark brown with very little lacing. Spices, earth tone, and nutmeg. This beer is late fall and the change of the seasons. Full taste with spice on the tongue. The flavors really pick up as the beer warms up. This beer has good balance and not all pumpkin spice up in your face.

Smells like gingersnap cookies, sugar, warmth. The taste follows the nose, with a nice hop touch at the end of the sip and malt all around. Very well balanced, not overtly spiced or sweet. The pumpkin is well done, meaty and tasty without been overpowering. Nice mouthfeel- I love how the spiciness of the brew remains in the lips for a while, although it could use a little more body and heft