Pumpkin IPAs provide the white whale to the pumpkin beer genre: will we ever catch a taste of that damn elusive pumpkin through a sea of hops? Sharing a kinship with Captain Ahab and Ron Swanson alike, I’m willing to try again and again and again. CBC has provided us with a translucent sunflower-colored IPA that smells richly of being dry-hopped with Galaxy and other hops. Will the pumpkin make an appearance, especially with a name that summons a zombie level intensity of hunger and thirst? Not to this drinker, but the pie pumpkins do provide a hearty-bodied IPA with a juicy pear quality and a hop-blend edge that would shatter the brain of any walking dead.
A pumpkin IPA this fun-loving summons a more Shaun than Dawn of the Dead variety Zombie – time to dance to Queen and fight off the Living Dead with pool cues and BFFs. This IPA may also sway the non-pumpkin beer believer with a brew that doesn’t fit the norm of the mediocre masses. 85/100
