I’ve liked about one out of every seven pumpkin beers I’ve had and this is not one of them. This beer was hand delivered to me by my old roommate, who was committed to finding a smoked beer that had not yet been introduced to SmokeBeerMinistry. And after a few tries, he achieved success in a mere 6 months. He joins an elite group and was promptly consecrated into The Ministry and frocked, and although he kept yelling Semikhah during the ceremony, the outbursts were deemed acceptable given our non-denominational status. But more about the beer… Right off the bat wafted notes of Christmas beer (the worst notes found in pumpkin beers). SmokeBeerMinstry is looking for Yule Log and Smokey Jack delivered a scented candle. Deeper in the nose is a decent saison, but you gotta get pretty deep in the weeds to find that. And written on the back of the can it lists “cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves” which has got to be the four horsemen of the beer apocalypse. And as I sip looking for smoke, or even a decent saison, I can’t seem to get potpourri out of my head. Smoke is in there, however, and it doesn’t help matters out much at all. I guess I’m dogging this beer pretty hard, but don’t go looking for Sketchbook to straighten this all out, as they have stricken Smokey Jack from their website (but it’s still mentioned on Facebook, however). Final score for this beer is a generous 3 out of 7 smokestacks.

Pretty decent website Sketchbook has:

https://www.sketchbookbrewing.com