Picked up a sixpack of Pumpkin Ale from Buffalo Bill’s Brewing (they who made the interesting Orange Blossom Ale I reviewed a while back) this weekend. Of the very few commercial pumpkin beers I’ve had, I think this is the best of them. (Not to say it’s the best out there; I just don’t have access to many.)

It’s a decent beer, pretty much what you’d expect from a pumpkin ale: copper-amber color, malty sweet, pumpkin pie essence. It’s a little on the light side, in both alcohol and mouthfeel. But, as far as this style goes, you could do a lot worse; I’d recommend it to someone who’s never tried a pumpkin ale before (if I didn’t have any of my own homebrewed pumpkin on hand, of course), and, it’s cheap—I picked it up for $5.99 for the sixpack, which around here is a good deal for microbrews.

The beer didn’t fare as well on BeerAdvocate; it only got an overall score of 77 and many reviews are not kind.

Now I’ll have to start checking other places in town and see if anyone carries other examples of pumpkin ales…