A Quest for the Great Pumpkin Beer
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
The overall results.
In the end, the results seem fairly scattered and serve better to tell each participant what they liked best more than really serving as an accurate gague of what others may like. Looking at trends, the Blue Moon was the consistent winner, and stands a good chance of being something you would enjoy.
| Averages | Smuttynose | Post Rd | Buffalo Bill | Blue Moon | Pumpkin Patch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smell | 3.25 | 2.875 | 2.125 | 3 | 3 |
| Sip | 2.375 | 3.125 | 2.75 | 3.1875 | 2.875 |
| In Mouth | 2.375 | 3 | 2.75 | 3.375 | 2.875 |
| Swallow | 2.75 | 2.5 | 2.375 | 3.375 | 3 |
| Aftertaste | 2.75 | 2.8125 | 2.875 | 3.3125 | 3 |
| Repeat | 2.625 | 2.75 | 2.25 | 3.375 | 2.75 |
| Memories | 1.625 | 2 | 2.75 | 3 | 2.125 |
| Overall | 2.125 | 2.8125 | 2.5 | 3.375 | 2.9375 |
| Pumpkinosity | 2.75 | 2.25 | 3.125 | 3 | 2.5 |
| Enjoyment | 2.125 | 3 | 2.5625 | 3.25 | 3 |
| Beerishness | 3 | 3.25 | 2.25 | 2.75 | 2.875 |
| Slugability | 2.4 | 3 | 2.8 | 3 | 3.25 |
| Comments | Bitter/ Shitty | camping/ beery | Bubblegum/ Plastic | Rotting Fruit/ Sweet/ great? | Minty/ smokey/ syrupy/ creamy/ old-weed? |
| Hints Of | Bitter/bad beer | Spices/beer | bubblegum/ plastic/ Maple Syrup | spices/ magic/ rotten fruit | sausage/ weed/ minty |
Each beer had a pretty wide variation of reactions. Each beer ended up on someone's top-beers list (receiving a 4 or better overall rating) and someone else's worst list (receiving a 1), though Blue Moon was not rated lower than 3 by anyone.
An Excel Spreadsheet of all of the results can be found here.
I plan to repeat this tasting this year with more people and beers. I already have 3 new ones, and am hoping for more. We'll probably expand the grading to a 1 to 10 scale (to get more noticible differences between answers), and possibly alter the categories a bit if I can figure out a way to have them make more sense. Comments and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged, here.
After performing all of this and writing most of it, I found this article which reviews some pumpkin beers.
Please read more stuff at the rarely updated HomeworkParty.com!
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Process and Procedures
Part 3: Tasting Parameters
Part 4: Results by Beer
Part 5: Conclusions