it’s starting to get darker a little earlier, 300 lb men are giving each other concussions every sunday, i’m consistently having better hair days because it’s no longer 1000% humidity {except today.  ick}, & last saturday it was actually cool enough to pull on a pair of jeans, which also deemed it ok to run to starbucks for the first pumpkin spice latte of this year.

this can only mean one thing: fall is upon us {well, tomorrow it is.}.

so are the pumpkin ales.  & there are a lot of them these days, so we’re here to help.  in fact, we & a few beer loving friends blindly tasted through a bunch of them to pick out this year’s front runners.

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these two perennial favorites were at the top & it’s no surprise.  cottonwood actually came out the overall winner, but you really can’t go wrong with either of these.

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this newcomer {to our area, at least}, ranked pretty high up there, too.

i know we already revealed the winner, but here we have pumking, which just wasn’t available at the time of our tasting.  if it had been, i’m positive it would have been the winner. pumking is new to north carolina this year, but we made the mistake of picking one up in virginia last year.  the mistake?  only picking up one.

i fell in love in one smell…graham cracker crumbs.  all the pumpkin & pumpkin spice flavors are there, plus maybe a little brown butter?  vanilla?  it’s heavenly, really.

so there you have it: fall…in your mouth.

now get shopping!  these are all seasonal & sell out FAST!