Autumn is my favorite season for three reasons: the amazing weather and foliage that hits the Northeast region, the start of professional football season, and, most importantly, the onslaught of great pumpkin beer. Every year, around this time, stores and bars begin celebrating the colder weather with grand displays featuring brews embracing the season’s favorite flavor. And since my personal attempt to create my very own pumpkin beer was thwarted by a siphoning incident, I’d like to take the blog post to share my favorite options for you to indulge in the awesomeness that is Autumn beer:

1. Shock Top Pumpkin Wheat, the category’s newest addition, is one of the best pumpkin beers of the season. The unfiltered wheat ale features crisp flavor of nutmeg, cinnamon and clove that could only be delivered from a Shock Top cask. It has easily become my personal “must-have” beer of the season.

2. Smutty Nose Pumpkin Ale is more relaxed in flavor but not in quality. The smooth taste and thick texture makes this ale the perfect compliment to your annual Thanksgiving dinner. Start planning your sides around it.

3. Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale is a spicy and sweet autumn beer inspired by one of the top Belgian Whites beers. It is the great addition to the traditional citrus flavor of the Blue Moon family but brewed with the bounty of fall spices making it a necessary addition to your weekly Sunday tailgate.

- Dan

As an all around sports fan, I love the Olympics.  I love the competition.  I love the excitement. But most of all, I love the useless sports that draw me to the television like a moth to a flame. Like curling.  Every four years, I spend two weeks routing for Team USA’s curling squad, equipped with brooms and beer guts, as they strategically place their rocks in the house. 

For those of you who don’t understand what I would like to call “The Most Exciting Sport Since Go Fish,” let me enlighten you to the basics:

- Curling is similar to a huge shuffle board game on ice.

- Two teams of four alternate sliding huge stones, called rocks, down a long stretch towards a circular target called a house.

- During each match, both teams have ten attempts to get their rock closest to the center of the house.

- The team that successfully wins the most matches out of ten is the overall victor.

Right now, you might be saying, “Curling doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.  I like contact sports like hockey.” I’m here to set the record straight and tell you that curling, in fact, is a full contact sport. For example, when your opponent has the extreme athletic ability to slide his/her rock into the center of the house perfectly, it’s time to play defense.  On the next turn, you would throw your rock straight down the lane knocking his stone and sending it flying out of the house. And I ask you, my friend, what is more contact than two 25 lb. stones hitting each other?

While this description might not convey the intensity of the greatest winter sport ever, I invite you to take the time during the next week and watch a game. I promise that after spending some quality time enjoying a curling match, this sport will “rock” your world.

Dan