Homebrewed Honey Pumpkin Cranberry Spruce Ale

Home Brewed Honey Pumpkin Cranberry Ale

This Home brewed, Honey Pumpkin Cranberry ale was hopped with Spruce, Willamete and Chinook hops. The aroma is right there, as you'd expect with enough of these fine, if ignoble hops, slightly bitter but very tasty, if I don't say so myself, which I did, so there's that.  I brewed it, so naturally, the bias is in the boil.   

It came in at roughly 7% AVB, but not too hot to miss the spot.

It has a nice froth, and deep dark color because I used dark malt in addition to all the fun with adjuncts, which included Wisconsin clover honey, fresh and canned pumpkin, and cranberry juice.  The flavor is well balanced to the spruce and hops, if somewhat of more thin and dry than say, a milky stout, and more like a porter, as the malt was replaced with these other elements.  I guess I want to take notice of the dry, rough mouthfeel that I presume the pumpkin's tannins left behind in this batch.

It's said that tannins create greater friction on mouth surfaces in various wines that are high in tannins, or as I've found out: "Tannins are thought to taste astringent because they bind with salivary proline-rich proteins and precipitate them out. This leads to increased friction between mouth surfaces, and a sense of dryness or roughness."

I imagine that's what's happened here to leave such a dry flavor in this ale.

But what's really really worth writing home about are how this beer got legs when paired with a fermented cauliflower-horse radish, cabbage kraut, which has been sitting several months.  The sour, acidic flavor was perfectly balanced with the strange if not radical adjunct ale project.  It made a nice after dinner snack, and will again, since I have 5 gallons, and several jars of kraut to wash down. 

Admittedly, I mixed a little old ale with the new one, which dashed the froth, but transferred fresh flavor to the second half of the first growler out of the fermentation bucket.  I even added a little Newburgh Paper Box IPA to change the hops profile (adding what tastes like 4 more), which was equally outstanding, if not more so.

I'm calling this bucket Little Bessie, because it's "a drunkard's dream if I ever did see one".