Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin (Pugsley’s Signature Series)

Brewed By: Shipyard Brewing Company in Portland, Maine 

Purchased: Giant 22oz bomber from Binny's in IL; 2012

Style/ABV: Spice/Herb/Vegetable (Imperial Pumpkin Ale), 9.0

Tonight we are revisiting Shipyard Brewing....and hopefully with better results. I'm just not a huge fan of their Pumpkinhead Ale. It's pumpkin spice soda, and it's not even brewed with pumpkin. Fortunately....tonight's beer is good. It's really good. Let's get down to it:

Shipyard Brewing is native to Portland, Maine, and a local treasure. Shipyard Brewing's story started back in 1992, in the seacoast village of Kennenbunkport Harbor. Entrepreneur Fred Forsley and master brewer Alan Pugsley started Federal Jack's Restaurant & Brew Pub, which became the birthplace of Shipyard ales. Around the time that Federal Jack's was getting started, the American craft beer industry was starting to grow, and within two years the demand for the beer was greater than the capacity at the pub. So Fred and Alan opened the Shipyard Brewing Company in Portland in 1994, and by 1996 it was the fasted growing craft brewery in the country. Shipyard is currently the 15th largest microbrewery in the United States, and the third largest in New England after the Boston Beer Company and Harpoon Brewery. These guys crank out a ridiculous amount of beer, and they also make soda.  

It's okay, have a fig newton. I'm from Maine!

If you roll over to Shipyard's beer page, you can get the info on this beer. This beer is brewed with Wheat and Munich malts (along with Pale malts), uses top-fermenting English yeast, and features Willamette and Hallertau hops. Really, this beer has a lot of German stuff going on. Suggested food pairings are: sharp cheese, nuts, lamb, stews, pumpkin pie, and mother fucking fig newtons.

This is a big beer for realz, though. 9.0% ABV...it's spiced with nutmeg (according to the bottle)...and apparently: "Pale Ale, Wheat, and Light Munich Malts combine with the natural tannin in pumpkin and the delicate spiciness of Willamette and Hallertau Hops to balance the sweetness of the fruit." They recommend serving this at 55 degrees Fahrenheit. I love the bottle art with its simple paper wrapper...but I hate the foil. I can't stand beers that use foil. Oh well. Into the glass and blah blah.

Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin

Once you peel apart the sticky mess that's the foil, you can actually open the beer. I got some nice smoke, and I would be impressed, but peeling off that foil is harder than putting a condom on. That should be Shipyard's slogan. The beer pours a lovely hazy orange color. You get about a finger's worth of orange-tinted head, which is fairly thick. After the head subsides, you're left with a really nice thin coating of bubbles. It's reminiscent of a Belgian ale or something heavily carbonated. And sure enough, when you swirl the beer in your glass, you kick up a lot of head. When held to bright light, this beer is a perfect orange color, and you can see quite a bit of carbonation in the form of tiny bubbles rising upwards. Overall, this is really solid looking stuff.

The aroma on this beer is sooooo fucking nice. There's a boozy thing going on in here, and then there is this wine thing going on. This beer's aroma makes up for all the sins committed by Pumpkinhead. I get pumpkin seeds, earthy pumpkin, slight tart pumpkin (it reminds me of New Belgium's Kick), and big wet pumpkin notes like you just cut into a pumpkin to remove all the gunk. I get a strong nutmeg aroma in here, along with some hints of cinnamon, spiced rum, and other spices. There's also a wine thing going on in here...like a woody tannin character. And some flirtations with pie crust, but largely on the NOT sweet side of things. Really nice and complex stuff on the nose.

The tasty is boozy, surprisingly bitter, and full of tannins that are really brought out with those Munich malts. Up front is some subdued bitterness and building malt...this gives way to nutmeg, cinnamon, rum...there are definitely earthy and floral hop notes in this, and some slightly woody and tart pumpkin. I get some juicy qualities to this, with nice pumpkin, bitterness...I am getting some hints of pie crust in the back end as this dries out leaving lingering malt.

This is mad tasty, and really comes to life as it warms up. That earthy tannin thing really plays off the spices in a nice way. Big nutmeg, earthy hops, pumpkin, and wine-like tannins. This is a medium-full beer, with great palate depth, lots of spritzy supporting carbonation, and good complexity for the style. At 9.0% ABV, this drinks like a big boy beer, but still goes down pretty easy. You get some warming on the back. Up front is malt, spice, and initial sweetness; this rolls into spice, hops, bitterness; the back end is lingering pumpkin, pie crust, and it dries out with some malt dryness. Tannins are abound with a wine thing going on. 

Rating: Above-Average  

I'm feeling a Strong Above-Average on this. This is really good shit, and one of the better pumpkin beers out there. This is much better than Pumpkinhead, but I suppose you can't really compare to the two. This beer is a spicy, pumpkiny, wine substitute. I'd pair this with some cheese, a stew, turkey, duck, or even some Chinese food. I say skip Pumpkinhead and buy this...but yeah.

Random Thought: Tomorrow I will try to do Pumking review. Pumking. Pumking. Pumking. I can feel the hits increasing just by typing that. PUMMMKIIINGGG!!! Awwww yeah.