OMMEGANG SCYTHE & SICKLE HARVEST ALE

Although lacking significant autumn seasoning (pumpkin spicing or earthly gourd), sugar-spiced ‘specialty grain’ ale may be the most accessible Ommegang brew marketed. Closer to the lightweight crystalline sugaring Stella Artois approximates, this easygoing Biere De Garde brings flaked rye-oats cereal graining and sourdough yeast creaming to a honeyed biscuit malt base that sweetens humble apricot, pear, tangerine, cantaloupe and nectar illusions.
 

 

PORT JEFF PORTER

Initial chocolate-smoked malting receives organic honeyed saccharine sugaring to sway dark-roasted hop bittering and charcoal-stained dark chocolate acridity. Molasses-sapped pumpernickel toasting gains strength over ancillary ground coffee, burnt caramel, vanilla, anise, soy and dry bourbon illusions. Blackened nuttiness inundates smoked mocha finish.

WEYERBACHER TANGO BELGIAN DARK ALE WITH CHERRIES

On tap at Copper Mine, robust Belgian dark ale boasts strong sour ale overtones (but qualifies as a cherry ale due to its fruitier appropriation). Abundant sour cherry tartness reaches nirvana above rich mocha malting and coarse hop spicing. Cherry cordial, black cherry, rum raisin, plum, fig and raspberry illusions rush through candi-sugared sweetness. Buttery bourbon, burgundy and Chardonnay wining simmers inside rewarding black and red cherry canvas as well.     

BALLAST POINT HABANERO SCULPIN

On tap at Copper Mine, interestingly divergent hybridized IPA brings abrupt habanero-peppered burn to overwhelmed up-front citric fruiting, bettering its slim hot-spiced competition. Grapefruit-peeled orange rind bittering that leads the way for the standard Sculpin IPA (plus tertiary mango, guava, pineapple and papaya tropicalia) get whisked away by habanero heat as well as jalapeno chili peppering and phenol capsaicin pungency of deviously peculiar dry-bodied offshoot.