As students, we look forward to Halloween for weeks — planning out our costumes and anticipating the wild parties. And when the big day (or six, if you go to Syracuse University) finally arrives, we do it big.

So when it came time to commemorate my final college Halloweek, I had to choose the best Halloween beer I could possibly find. The king of all pumpkin beers, you might say.

The search led me to Southern Tier Pumking ale.

I have heard legends of this beer from friends, random Twitter followers and even my mom for weeks now. I have searched high and low for it, but Beer Mecca, aka Wegmans, doesn’t carry that variety of Southern Tier, at least not in Syracuse.

I caught a glimpse of a bartender cracking open a 22-ounce of it at Al’s Wine & Whiskey Lounge a few weeks ago, but I still couldn’t find a way to buy a few bottles to take home. Suffice it to say that the Pumking has been eluding me.

So I outsourced to the brewery itself and have been hoarding a lone bottle in my fridge, waiting for the opportune time.

Even though I’d had weeks to mentally prepare for the magic of the Pumking, I did not have my game face on for this one. I never expected something so flavorful, so full of spices or so full of alcohol.

Let’s just say the Pumking won.

It’s not even that the 8.6 percent ABV got to me — although honestly I did get a little tipsy. It was this beer’s delicious, intoxicating flavor, which was overwhelming from the time I popped the cap off to the very last drop.

The Pumking is so flavorful that you can very clearly smell it from approximately 3 feet away. I felt like I was getting an autumnal contact high just from sniffing it, and I was almost afraid to drink it.

After all, the bottle claims the beer is bewitched and was “brewed with pagan spirit.” I wholeheartedly believe that because, wow, this beer is like nothing I’ve ever tasted before.

So many flavors hit you at once — it’s almost difficult to distinguish what’s what. But then you start to pick up the taste of caramel malts and the real, pureed pumpkin and the two varieties of hops. It kind of tastes how jumping into a pile of leaves feels: crisp, spicy and just a little bit suffocating.

Don’t get me wrong, this beer is amazing — but it’s definitely not for the casual beer drinker. It’s overwhelming in nearly every respect, and it deserves to be sipped and savored, not chugged out of an orange Solo cup.

While I did have enough class not to drink it out of a plastic cup, I unfortunately didn’t have a goblet to sip it from like the bottle suggests.

All in all, the Pumking was sensational — a lot to handle, a little intense and extremely alcoholic. But it’s Halloween, after all. Go big or go home.

Published on October 30, 2013 at 9:35 pm

Contact Avery: avhartma@syr.edu | @averyhartmans