Tags
Elysian Brewing, La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado, stone collaboration, Stone pumpkin beer, The Bruery pumpkin beer
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I thought I’d give pumpkin beers a second shot after last week’s SD Brewed (which one commenter called a drain pour). La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado isn’t your ordinary pumpkin beer. Sure it has pumpkin in it (grown at Stone Farms no less) but it also has yams, toasted fenugreek, lemon verbena and birch bark in it. This certainly isn’t a pumpkin pie beer.
The name roughly translates from French as The Celestial Pumpkin of Citracado. Citracado is of course the street on which Stone Brewing Co. is located (and where this collaboration beer was brewed). I say roughly because Citrueille is not a French word. The proper spelling of pumpkin is citrouille, I’m assuming the misspelling is a nod to Patrick Rue of The Bruery. La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado was brewed at Stone as a collaboration with Orange County’s The Bruery and Seattle’s Elysian Brewing.
There’s no sign of cinnamon, nutmeg or allspice here, the usual pumpkin beer ingredients, with aroma’s that waft out of the glass. La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado doesn’t smell like ordinary beers. There’s a bit of citrus, which I can only assume is the lemon verbena as well as some earthy woodiness which I assume to be the birch bark.
The taste is good, but it’s hard to pick out the distinct flavors (partially because I’m not terribly familiar with all of them). To over simplify things I’ll say overall there’s spice and herb like bitterness with just a bit of sweetness up front. I don’t think I pick up any pumpkin or yam flavors, but I imagine compared with lemon verbena, fenugreek and birch bark those are the more subtle flavors.
When cold the mouthfeel is rich, creamy and full feeling, much thicker than I expected from a 5% beer. As it warms it does become a bit sweet less pleasant. I’d recommend drinking this on the cooler side, around 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
For all the crazy ingredients (fun fact: according to Wikipedia fenugreek is a galactagogue) this beer comes together nicely.
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