How do you know it’s Autumn in New York City before the leaves have even turned yellow from their perennial green tone? When your local grocery or brew shop starts pumping out Oktoberfest and pumpkin ales starting sometime in mid- or late-September. Seldom you’ll see the big leaguers like Sam Adams or Dogfish put theirs out in August or September. Then the pandemic happened and I didn’t see much of anything in 2020 and on my third perusal of few Manhattan groceries and Queens corner stores and grocery stores, 2021 has turned in fewer than a handful of pumpkin ales of note on the local or regional tier.
Pumpkin ales are notorious for running either extreme of being a low or slightly spiced up version of a traditional Oktoberfest-style Marzbier (typical dark and toasty malt-forward ale with a light helping of allspice, cardamom, cloves or cinnamon) to a slice of day-old pumpkin pie drenched in caramel and spices, but overpowering and no longer beer-like. In recent years this style of Autumnal delight has gone the way of the Starbucks’ pumpkin spiced latte crowd with a number of noteworthy breweries (*including Southern Tier, which I have tremendous respect) putting out bastardized pumpkin ales that at a higher ABV content of 8% or 10% come forward as a liquid form of your Aunt Patty’s over-sweetened, day-old slice of pumpkin pie or pumpkin cheesecake. There’s no holding back the level of brown sugar and caramel backwash that comes with these more recent pumpkin ales, and if you’re looking for a “dessert beer” in an 8 ounce stemmed glass pour, then these are for you.
Before today I’ve never had anything that sticks out in my mind from Five Boroughs, a brewery in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, though it’s entirely possible I may have stopped there with a few friends sometime around 2015-16 on a bike ride from Queens around Brooklyn to Coney Island. Five Boroughs’ Pumpkin Ale label says canned on Aug. 25, 2021, “brewed with pumpkin, a medley of base and specialty malts, and a touch of mixed spices. Fresh baked aromas are balanced by a slight, earthy hop charge.”
The roasty malts are the first characteristic of this fall ale, followed by a muddled mouthful of what I’d consider a blend of dried seasonal spices like allspice and cloves. What is not as pronounced is what specific spices are freshest or pin-pointed here. It’s as if you grabbed two or three idled baking spices that sat in your cupboard for the last five years but have no real pronounced flavor-add anymore. It’s.. something, but it’s also a muddled mouthful that gets overpowered by a hop backbone, the second and most pronounced element to this pumpkin ale but I wouldn’t call this a hoppy ale by any stretch. A hop provides this a bittering effect but overall this is an above-average, Czech or Saaz type of hop element that combined with a low level of spice conjures up a solid ‘stick-to-the-basics’ Pumpkin Ale from a New York City mainstay. Captain Lawrence and a few others come close to it or do a better job than this, but this is still a solid pick for a pumpkin ale, considering the void found among Autumnal brews post-pandemic. I will certainly look forward to revisiting a few hop-forward ales from Five Boroughs during the warmer months. [ABV: 6.0% | Grade: 3.5/5]
Michael Schoeck 