Thrifty Beverage Center: Post Road Pumpkin Ale – The Bite

Welcome back to The Bite, Sheepshead Bites’ weekly column where we explore the foodstuffs of Sheepshead Bay. Each week we check out a different offering from one of the many restaurants, delis, food carts, bakeries, butchers, fish mongers, or grocers in our neighborhood. If it’s edible, we’ll take a bite.

Ever since the rebirth of the micro-breweries, a dazzling array of beers have come on the market. First the brewers produced lagers and ales that awakened America’s love of fine beer. Next up was the seasonal beers, which saw a slew of summer ales, winter brews and oktoberfest lines.

Then they turned to the exotic ingredients like chili peppers, rye, lemons, and even chocolate. All of this confused this beer-swilling shlub. Why mess around with one of man’s greatest creations? Isn’t beer “proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” as Ben Franklin is often misquoted? Does Reinheitsgebot mean nothing to these folks?

Pull up a chair and let me pour you a glass of Post Road Pumpkin Ale. Today – The Bite takes a drink.

Pumpkin Ale is an old American tradition dating back to the times of the colonists. They’re credited with taking pumpkins, which were plentiful and sweet, and adding them into the mash for brewing. At the Brooklyn Brewery, which defiantly brews and bottles this beer in Utica, not Brooklyn, they take “hundreds of pounds of pumpkins” and blend it into the mash for each batch. Somewhere along the line they add some nutmeg and cinnamon.

This beer has a nice amber color and produces a nice finger-wide slightly off-white head that doesn’t last. Its ABV is 5 percent, which is about average for an American-produced beer. It has a mild aroma that made me think of clearing the dishes after dessert at Thanksgiving. I could smell the beer, but I got a whiff of pumpkin pie.

The first taste of this beer was a little disconcerting. This was like drinking a pumpkin pie. The spices overwhelmed the ale flavor. Swishing the beer around my mouth, like a connoisseur of fine beer, the spices faded away quickly and the ale took on a nice malty flavor. The aftertaste was surprisingly bitter. This is not a quick drinking beer.

Overall impression – meh. I wouldn’t turn this beer down if I was offered it a party, but I certainly won’t be seeking it out.

But, I will be trying out the other micro-brews offered at Thrifty.  I’m always up for a beer.

Thrifty Beverage Center (Flatbush Beer Distributors), 2115 Coyle Street, (718) 332-5520