Samuel Adams Fat Jack Double Pumpkin

Brewed By: Boston Beer Company in Boston, Massachusetts

Purchased: Giant 22oz Bomber bought at Jewel-Osco in Naperville, IL; 2012

Style/ABV: Spice/Herb/Vegebtale (Pumpkin Ale), 8.5%

This is how I feel.

It's hard to believe that I've been blogging about beer for over a year, so I'll try not to bitch about the same stuff I did last year. I'm talking about Fall beers showing up in stores in the middle of August. What. The. Fuck. It's August, and the sweat is dripping down my ass crack. Ladies, be happy you can wear skirts. It was like 93 today, and it still feels like Summer, despite the little blast of colder air that we had last week.

And yet...here I am, with all that egg pumpkin on my face drinking a pumpkin beer in the middle of August. I guess I'm just excited for all the Fall beers on the radar. I say that as a relative newcomer to craft beer; we'll see how I feel in 5 years. Anyway, I stopped at Jewel to pull out some cash to get a haircut, and thought I'd buy some beer instead of absorbing an ATM fee. I was looking at their (scant) beer selection, and I saw this bomber of Fat Jack. I paid around 3 dollars per bottle for this beer!!! I'm sure it was some sort of pricing error, but hot damn! I had to pick up a few bottles of this beer, especially at that price. It's not often you can snag a 22oz bomber of 8.5% ABV beer for 3 dollars. I mean, at that price, who cares what it tastes like, right? Right? (word on the street is proper retail price for this is around 6 to 10 bucks).

I have pretty high hopes for this beer. I've heard this beer is more like a malty, Barleywine-style beer, rather than a pumpkin-spice-rape beer. And I really, really enjoyed Sam Adam's Harvest Pumpkin Ale from last year. That was a good beer. Speaking of Sam Adams...

Samuel Adams was founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, and currently the Boston Beer Company is the largest American-owned beer company in the United States. Sam Adams is also the largest craft brewer in America, with over a million barrels of beer being produced annually. You can check out the Sam Adam's website for more info.

I believe this beer used to go under the moniker "Double Pumpkin." The addition of "Fat Jack" seems to be recent to this year. At least, that's my understanding from crawling around Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate's forums. If you check out Sam Adams' Fat Jack page, you can get the breakdown of what makes this beer tick. This beer is brewed with 28 pounds of pumpkin per barrel, for "full bodied sweetness and deep russet color." In addition to all that real pumpkin goodness, this beer uses cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. The pumpkin-spice-rape trifecta...plus one. This beer is also loaded up with roasted malts, including two-row pale malt blend, rye, Special B, and smoked malt. Yes...this beer has smoked malt in it. This beer is also hopped with East Kent Goldings and Fuggles hops. Clocking in at 8.5% ABV and 25 IBUs, this beer will cost your diet 288 calories per 12oz serving. 

Sam Adams dives into the history of the Pumpkins Ales, which is worth noting. This style is inherent to America (fuck yeah!), and is one of the oldest styles of beer known to America. Back when New England colonists were unable to get their hands on grains, they used other fermentables including molasses, squash, sweet potato, and pumpkin to make beer. Modern Pumpkin Ales are more of a traditional tip of the hat to these classic brews, as the traditional Pumpkin Ales used pumpkin for sugars in the brewing process rather than flavor. Nevertheless, there is a very interesting history that goes with this style of beer, and it really brings that Fall/Autumn/Colonial/October/Halloween/Thanksgiving feeling home. Nostalgia, bitches! Let's get this into a glass.

Samuel Adams Fat Jack Double Pumpkin

The beer pours a reddish-brown color, with a nice finger's worth of caramel-colored head that does not stick around. The head leaves behind wonderful lacing, some alcohol legs, and a nice cauldron effect. When held to a bright light, this is a reddish/brown colored beer, with moderate carbonation in the form of small bubbles rising upwards. It's a very Fall-esque looking beer.

Right away I can say the aromas on this are very complex, especially for Sam Adams. I've been reviewing some of their Imperial Series beers as of late, and this blows those out of the water in terms of aroma. I smell pumpkin, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, hints of booze, and a giant malt backbone. I'm picking up big smoked malts on the nose, and they are surprisingly constrained. I'm not getting any meat or bacon: just smokey, Autumn goodness. The smoked malts absolutely shine when you smell them with the spices. I'm also getting just a hint of bready/dense heaviness in here. You can tell there is a malt backbone. Overall, big pumpkin and spice, and some nice smoked malt drive the aromatics on this beer.

Wow...yes. Mmmm. The taste is perfect. You get a blast of pumpkin and spice, and then the huge malt profile wallops your palate. This is a thick beer up front, and drinks like a (lighter but) sticky Barleywine. Then, on the back end, you get another blast of giant pumpkin and spice, and the beer thins out, leaving some lingering pumpkin and smoke. This is not Pumking. This is not your typical spice-rape-pumpkin beer. This is an incredibly complex, boozy, malty, Barleywine-style take on a Pumpkin Ale. Wow! I'm getting caramel, smoked malt, smoke, hints of Oktoberfest/Marzen, and big pumpkin/malt notes. There is some less sweet pumpkin pie and pumpkin cookies in here. And I'm getting spices, but they seem to be in check (no spice-rape here). I'm getting cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice. 

This is incredibly complex, with a good palate depth. I'm finding drinkability to be rather high with this, as it is not cloyingly sweet (Pumking) or overly aggressive with the spice (just about every other Pumpkin Ale). At 8.5% ABV, and with a slightly sticky/thick feel, there is enough density here to make this a sipper or warmer. But moderate carbonation and all the tingling spices cut through any density, making this beer approachable and drinkable. I'd say this has a medium body. Up front you get full-bodied pumpkin and sticky malt; this rolls into smoke and spice; the back end is spicy, smoky, and finishes a bit cleaner with some lingering pumpkin/smoke/spice. 

This beer is everything Autumn in a bottle. 

Rating: Divine Brew

This is a decent Divine Brew if there ever was one. I'm really digging the balance and complexity of this beer. It has a really big malt body, which is what I want as the temperatures dip. The sweetness in this beer seems to come naturally from the malts rather than added sugars, and the spices are kept in check. You can taste real, organic pumpkin in this beer, and it has a meaty, full pumpkin taste. The smoked malts REALLY compliment the spices and vibe of this beer. Basically, this beer is like a mix of a Barleywine with a Pumpkin Ale with an Oktoberfest. Really good stuff here, and this is by far one of the best beers I've had from Sam Adams in a long time. If you can hunt a bottle of this stuff down, pick it up! And remember: this isn't your typical Pumpkin Ale. Treat this beer like the complex sipping beer it is.