Canada land of sparse populations, hockey fans, and a national anthem that gets just a tad to close to the Oh Christmas Tree song. In the past they're common beer used to give American beer a run for it's money. The good old days Kokanee, Labatt, and in my opinion the worse tasting beer ever created Molsen Ice. Like the rest of North America though Canada has had a wonderful explosion on microbreweries across it's vast expanses. With a homebrew, and brewing culture going back hundreds of years its actually kind of suprising that it took them this long to get going, of course they are still working on that independance thing from the UK so I guess it shouldn't be that shocking. If your ever traveling on to Whistler BC you may travel through the town of Squamish and located there is Howe Sound Brewing. I've had a couple of their beers so far, and they've been pretty decent. With it being fall I decided to give a new pumpkin ale a shot, and this has got to be the dandy of them all so far. A couple of other people who tried it also echoed my setiments. This is probably the first pumpkin ale I've ever had where I could actually taste the pumpkin as a fair part of the palate. For once it was just as evenly distributed as the other flavors of the beer namely the spices. All the classic pumpkin pie flavors are in this ale cloves, cinammon, etc., but those flavors are balanced with a strong portion of pumpkin flavoring. The usual though the spices overwhelm your nose, which I actually like as a fan of spiced ales anyway. It's nice to have something different in this area of beers with some good balancing of flavors though, so you actually get something different than the standard array. The beer also rolls in at a nice heft of 8%, but does not seem to have quite the thickness of say a lower barleywine or other strong ale that can feel really full bodied. The nice thing about this strong pumpkin ale is that it is nice and drinkable, kind of like the opposite to Southern Tier's Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale. About the only downside on this one is the price it's a bigger, nice resealable bottle, and a strong beer so your going to pay a little bit more than your standard beer. But you can space out your drinking experience so your not trying to pass around a good 22oz one like most of our microbrews come on with our inferior non-resealable caps. Where to by 99 bottles, Tacoma Boys, most likely beer junction, and I've seen they're other beers pop up in Fred Meyers around the region, but not sure if this one will make such a wide dispersal. In any event it's nice to see a beer doing the red, white, and maple-leafed proud.
