This post is about a ghost. No, not an actual ghost. Those don't really exist. Instead, this post is about a ghost beer. It's a bit of a mental leap to get to that claim, so I'll walk you through it.

Around the time I was really started my craft beer journey, MadTree released barrel-aged variants of its The Great PumpCAN. Pumpkin beers and I didn't really see eye to eye at that time and the BA PumpCAN releases weren't even on my radar. It wasn't until I visited MadTree a few months after the release that I saw a poster for the beers and knew what I'd missed out on.

Now, let's pivot to talk about whales. I promise, this loops back around. A whale is a limited, rare, and highly sought-after beer. I've been lucky enough to enjoy a whale or two in my life. But, what's more important to me are my personal whales. These are beers that I'm after--still usually pretty rare--that might not necessarily be on someone else's whale list.

Beyond that, you have your white whales, your Moby Dicks, the ones that get away and, no matter how close you think you are to finally tracking them down, vanish. For five years that's what Bourbon Barrel Aged PumpCAN was to me (and it's what the rum barrel variant of it still is). Then, out of thin air, MadTree broke some beers out of their cellar last fall, BBA Pumpcan among them. My white whale had returned from the dead. A ghost, one that I managed to trap, one that's been haunting my cellar since.

Today, on All Hallow's Eve, I'm tearing into this ghost whale. Let's see if it lives up to the hype I've built around it.

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.

This is a beer that I found the day I heard about it. A month or so ago, I saw a bottleshop I follow on social media post about it. Intrigued, I resolved to pick it up if I ever happened upon it in the wild. Later that day, I found it in a totally different bottleshop while I was heading home from work. And now here we are.

The beer is R. Shea's Twitchy. I see on the brewery's website that they add another word to the name, but it's not a super good word (and one that I think we should work to de-normalize) so I won't be including it here. Nor is that word anywhere on my can. I figured I should address that early on in the post. 

Anyway, this might just be the biggest (ABV-wise) beer I drink this season. If it's not, it up there. Let's get to it.

Okay. Here's the spookiest thing you might read on the blog this season: I'm about to crack into a hard seltzer. Don't worry, I don't have plans to drink another one for reviewing. In fact, Pumpkin Spice is my first hard seltzer. But, since it's out, you know I had to do it.

Last year I seriously expected a pumpkin hard seltzer to hit the market--it just seemed too obvious to not happen. I vowed that, when it did, I'd make it the first seltzer I'd drink. But, to my shock, a pumpkin seltzer never materialized in 2019. Thankfully VIVE's remedied that for 2020. Here we go: VIVE's Pumpkin Spice.

Long time readers may recall two years ago when I drank Platform's Yammy Yammy, a 7.7% ABV sweet potato pumpkin pie-spiced ale. I didn't like it much. It garnered a 6.0/10 rating.

But, never one to learn lessons, I was tempting into purchasing the two new Yammy varieties Platform dropped for this spooky season: Candied Pecan Yammy and S'mores Yammy. Why? Because I found them easily enough (which might not be so simple to do now--I haven't seen S'mores Yammy in the wild since I grabbed my sixer). How do they stack up to the base sweet potato ale? We'll see!

Has it really been three years since I've talked about Sam Adams on here? I guess so. There's a reason why that is and, by the end of this post, you might just guess what that reason is. 

Anyway, it's officially October now, so I can begin my month-long discussion of pumpkin beers/cider(s)/seltzer without getting grief for it. Because, whether you love all things pumpkins spice or hate it, it's in-season starting today.

I'm kicking off the festivities with a beer I've had before, one that I think'll set the bar for the rest of the month. That beer is Samuel Adams' pumpkin offering for 2020: Jack-O.