Draft at Miskatonic Craft Kitchen, Naperville
Not as awesome as I hoped, but fine.
Draft at Miskatonic Craft Kitchen, Naperville
Both a dry lager and a mildly sweet pumpkin ale, cola-like, lightly spiced. Very drinkable.
Can
pFriem Oktoberfest (2024)
Sweet but drying, cloudy, cereal, brackish finish. This isn’t toasty, and the color is light to match - a wiesn maybe?
Draft
Quite nice - comes across more in the Kolsch camp than IPA. It's fragrant but not overly fruity; there's a lager-like turn to the flavor that finishes slightly uric. I liked it.
Draft
Very delicious. Not too sweet, just a hint of maple, a nut-butter overtone. You can definitely feel the strength over time but it's balanced, not over-the-top.
Bottle
Definitely a Bavarian flavor profile, but decidedly less sweet (watery?) than expected.
Draft
Vinous, ultra-dry, apple-grape, butter-bitter finish. Just exactly the right amount of funk. Gorgeous beer.
Draft
Like an extra strong version of the Icicle Helles I had earlier today but with a touch more banana. Finishes dry, bitter, tacky.
Bottle
Grassy, lightly sweet, somewhat buttery/tacky/metallic, it's been a while but I wouldn't be surprised if this was fairly similar to the Hofbräu Original Lager.
Draft
I admire that Urban Family is always around to do offbeat sours. This is characterisitically tart but otherwise light and festive. Not sure if there's anything specifically pumpkiny about this but the pie spice is light but present.
Can
Bracing; clean; fragrant. Piney without any other over-the-top qualities. This was great!
Can
There’s something really off-putting about the fragrance of this beer, it’s like vegetal and herbal and sour and bitter like a sanitary puck. Flavor-wise it’s … fine? Pine-lemon, acrid bitterness. But I can’t not smell it.
Draft
Lemon-pine, thin up front like a soda. Finishes more Pilsner-like, brackish, grassy.
Draft
Extremely sweet if not syrupy, but ironically, tastes like syrup. Bit of burnt sugar, caramel. The syrup character is so accurate that it feels tackled on, surely these didn’t ferment with the beer?
Draft
Spiced, dark, caramel. It’s a lot drier than I expected, finishes like dried stone fruit. Thin in body.
Draft
Lightly sweet, lightly smoky. Definitely less smoke than other rauchbiers I’ve recently had.
Draft
Elysian Pumpkin Old Fashioned (unknown release)
Don’t know if this was mislabeled but it felt way less than the listed 12.3%. There was, however, a bit of whisky on the nose. Fruity, mildly sweet ale.
Draft
Extremely creamy pour. Lightly sweet, caramel cream ale with just a hint of cold fizz at the end. Perfect for what I wanted.
Nitro Draft
Pine-lemon IPA with a cloudy flavor and mellow finish. Bought it because of the name; worked better than the Redhook IMO.
Draft
Peach, lemon, very mellow, surprisingly unbitter. Kind of found myself actually wanting this to be more of a hop bomb.
Draft
Pineapple-forward, juicy, slightly tangy going to a high herbal bitterness. Clean finish.
Draft
Started off great, a little murky, dark citrus, smooth finish. By the end though I felt like I was sucking on grapefruit rind.
Draft
Not that different from the Fresh Bois, a little more lemon, more bitter, uric tackiness. Pretty good but love the can.
Can
Matchless Fresh Bois (2024)
Fragrant of melon, lightly sweet. Other than that, a bit like a malt soda, I could hardly detect alcohol.
Can
Orange-forward and very not-bitter. Slightly drying finish with not much cereal at all.
Draft
Definitely a beer in the lemon-pine strata-sphere. But very good example of that. If I have any complaints it's that it's overwhelmingly in the juicy-fruity arena with not much counterbalance
Draft
It's deifnitely spice-heavy, so if that's not what you like about pumpkin beers you might want to avoid. But it does seem balanced by the overall strength of this beer for me. This might appeal more if you're in the mood for a spiced liquor rather than a beer though.
Draft
A much better experience than the Evasion. Bright, only a hint of orange, lots of banana, finishes spicy. Kind of wish there was a stronger orange quality but at least this tastes like a beer.
Draft
Only learned after the fact that this is a gluten-free brewery. Maybe that's why it's missing any trace at all of cereal? Starts with a perfumey orange-flavor, a little candy-like, and then proceeds straight into bitter oils. Did not like.
Draft
A nice, earthy coffee flavor up-front followed by caramel. I don't really like how this finishes though, very tacky and a bit metallic-tart.
Bottle
Starts with Apple-hop dryness, finishes with pithy bitterness. I liked this, but a little less than the Lumberbeard.
Draft
Early pith bitterness, with a lemon-pine flavor that carries straight on through. Finished clean. Brian thinks the opposite though.
Bottle
Fremont Melange Barrel Aged Cuvee (unknown release)
Light, chocolate, caramel. Really excellent. Enough barrel to show itself but not in your face.
Draft
Light and fragrant. There's the typical rice sweetness, but also a little more of a bitter edge than I was expecting for the style.
Draft
Lumberbeard Disco Weapon (2024)
Bright up front, citron, pine, without that sweet lemon cleaner sheen. Finishes closer to the Kolsch than I was expecting: cereal, yeast. Very clean though.
Draft
Zoiglhaus Fresh Hop Kölsch (2024)
Yeasty, lightly estery Kolsch, finishes with cereal funk. Just one step removed from an American hefe. There's not a traditional fresh hop sheen on this, but it does seem to give a clean, bright crest to the flavor wave.
Draft