The Lobstah PumQueen

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An orange squash brought much joy to my life last night. I dressed up as a lobster,

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met up with a vampire…

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as well as a cop and a hunter…

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and headed to a pumpkin beer festival at the Cambridge Brewing Company!!!!!!! When we arrived, there was a huge wait, but we braved the cold for an hour and a half because we LOVE beer. It was totally worth it in the end. We were ravenous when we finally got in, so we grabbed our first sample and ordered some pumpkin food.

I had bites of Matt’s grilled pork sausage with braised collard greens, cascade hop infused hot sauce, and pumpkin mustard relish; probably one of the best sausages I’ve ever tasted.

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Also delicious was my roasted sugar pumpkin bisque with cranberry, sage and walnut crumble, and a brown butter drizzle.

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Dessert was a to-die-for pumpkin bread pudding with pumpkin ale ice cream and house made butterscotch.

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Although we had table service for dinner, we still had to get up to refill our glasses, so we all took turns running around to different stations in the restaurant to get more beer. Around ten, there was a procession through the restaurant and the ceremonious tapping of the great pumpkin full of beer occurred. Too bad the beer inside was blahh and very watery.

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And now to the beers! I tried 16 different pumpkin beers (out of the 32 they had available). I didn’t waste samples on beers I’d already had (like pumking(!)) and there were a few that I really really wanted to try, but they were all out when I got around to ordering them. I rated all the beers with a letter grade and nothing I tried got lower than a B-. They had a few sour pumpkin ales, which I actually liked, but I just see those in a different category than the others because they are almost summery. Here are all the beers that got A’s:
  • The Bruery: Autumn Maple
  • Rock Art: Imperial Spruce Pumpkin Stout
  • Cambridge Brewing Co: Punjabi Pumpkin
  • Cambridge Brewing Co: Spinal Pumpkin Barleywine
  • Clipper City: Heavy Seas Great Pumpkin
  • Unita: Punk’n

And the winner of the best beer was the Iron Hill Bruce Camp-Ale. All the samples I had were 4oz pours, but I went back for this one in an 8oz pour at the end of the night because it was just divine. It was a bourbon barrel aged imperial ale; it was very rich (9.5% abv) and the bourbon from the barrels made it perfectly sweet. My second favorite was the Autumn Maple (above).

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Overall, it was a totally awesome night with friends and one of the best substances on the earth:)

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  • Kath
    October 31, 2010 at 2:46 pm

    OH wow!

  • Lauren
    October 31, 2010 at 6:24 pm

    What a great event! Had we been in town last night, I definitely would have wanted to attend 🙂

  • Matt
    November 1, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    Oh god I hate The Bruery’s Autumn Maple… waaaaaaaay too much molasses. Wish I had been there!

    Tomorrow I’ll be kegging my Imperial Pumpkin. If you can’t make it to Thanksgiving I’m sure there will be some left for Christmas.

    • Laura
      November 1, 2010 at 9:55 pm

      Exciting! I hope we make it there the Friday after Thanksgiving!

  • Sara
    November 1, 2010 at 10:08 pm

    OMG, fantastic costume Laura!! You looked great…nice shoes too!

    • Laura
      November 1, 2010 at 10:27 pm

      Thanks!!

  • Anne @ Your Kind of Salad
    November 2, 2010 at 3:46 pm

    I’m SO jealous! I adore pumpkin beer! I wish I knew this was happening! Do you think CBC is still serving pumpkin beers??