Yesterday was chilly but today's downright cold. Michelle and I are in our living room with a fire blazing in our buck stove, which is piping heat into our home (we also have a furnace that does this, but a fire's more atmospheric). For the first time in months, I'm not doing a review from my porch. This is from my couch, as I sit in a hoodie and sweats. I've got some Halloweeny dungeon synth pumping through my speakers. It's still, definitely, the witching season.

You may recall me drinking Warped Wing's Bourbon Barrel Aged Flying Heads for my penultimate spooky post last year. Well, this year we're turning that Flying Heads next-to-last Halloween post into a tradition with 2019's Rum Barrel Aged variant. Let's see how the last year's treated the ale.

It just feels like Halloween today, you know? Besides the grey overcast sky, the brilliant autumn colors alighting the trees, and the crisp breeze on the 50-something degree day, I mean. Tonight Michelle and I are carving our pumpkins while watching Hocus Pocus. Spooky.

So, to keep the Halloween convoy that is today's activities a-trucking, I figured I might as well do up my next post of the month. This is a beer I've had before (I bought it on a whim when it dropped the other month--late-August, I think). I haven't had it since but, if I'm remembering correctly, it's something pretty special. Today I'm cracking into Erie Brewing Company's Johnny Rails.

It's raining. They sky's a slate gray. Crows are cawing. Flaming orange and rusty yellow leaves are falling. There's a definite chill in the air. Yeah, this is officially the Halloween season.

This is the kind of fall day I absolutely adore. What better way to revel in the autumnal vibe of it than to crack into the next pumpkin brew I was planning to discuss here? Without further fanfare, here we go: Whole Hog's Pumpkin Ale.

Do you remember back in January when I discussed a beer from Breakside Brewery? If so, you may recall that my buddy from Portland, OR brought it as well as another bottle. In the post, I mentioned that I'd save that second bottle for a time closer to Halloween since it was pumpkiny.

Well, I'm breaking into that second bottle now. All the way from Oregon, we have 2 Towns Ciderhouse's Hollow Jack'd. It's been aging in my cellar since January with a bottling date of "1910HWJ07" (which I'm choosing to interpret as October 7th, 2019). Let's see how the bottle's drinking a year and a week after being bottled.