Food Fight: Pumpkin beer

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Pumpkin beers are about as divergent as, say, french fries, or whiskeys. Their pumpkin flavor ranges from barely detectable to running-you-over-with-a-dumptruck, and while they're usually ales, they can be lagers too. New Holland's Ichabod Ale, for example, has a subtle, undistracting sweetness, while Elysian Pumpkin Ale -- which I tried recently in Seattle -- literally tastes like watered down canned pumpkin. (I had like one sip.)

Here's how two locally available pumpkin brews -- an ale and a lager -- stand up. If pumpkin beer's your thing, act fast though. Just cause the pumpkin-centric Thanksgiving holiday is yet to come, some places have already stopped selling pumpkin beers.

It's actually fairly difficult -- if not impossible -- to detect any pumpkin flavor in Blue Moon's Harvest Pumpkin Ale, and that's not necessarily a bad thing (see aforementioned detail on Elysian Pumpkin Ale). It's very light, easy to drink, and frankly just tastes basically like Cheap Beer X, Y, or Z -- only it unfortunately isn't all that cheap. It might be best suited to those of you who don't necessarily dig flavored beers but nonetheless want to appear original in your beer choice and/or festive and seasonally appropriate.