Last night I had a lovely and surprisingly feminine evening of shopping, sewing, accordian playing and drinking with my wife and a friend of ours who is making our soon-to-be awesome Halloween costumes.

After retiring a decent bottle of Cotes du Rhone I ducked under an umbrella for some beer and cigarettes. The rain was falling in meters and the yellow orange leaves of the city street caught the proper gloss under the moon. I stepped through the tin-frame of the neighborhood liquor store to find our next victim.

I drifted from a local regular, to a semi-local treat before finally landing on New Holland’s seasonal Ichabod. Here’s how New Holland describes it on their site:

Ichabod combines malted barley and real pumpkin with cinnamon and nutmeg in a delicious and inviting brew. A rewarding complement to many dishes, Ichabod pairs well with autumnal foods such as poultry and root vegetables. After dinner, try it with your favorite dessert!

This is the first pumpkin ale I’ve tried that I would ever drink again, let alone drink more than one in a row. And drink them I did. Extremely well balanced, giving a crisp start and finish, the pumpkin and the spice is there only as a shadow, something to be conjured with the proper foods rather than something to be dampened down by another, less obnoxious, brew. The coloring was nice although the carbonation was a bit underwhelming, though this probably was because I was drinking it from a 12oz bottle. Not much of a smell and what was there was not much to write home about.

All in all, this, like most of New Holland’s portfolio, was a surprising and very drinkable beer, one I will certainly revisit before the season is over. And, if you’re looking to serve this with a meal, you can hit up New Holland’s pairing index to get some suggested recipes to serve Ichabod with. I think I’m going to try it with Dr. Pants Laroo’s Pumpkin Chili (I’ll post that recipe later) that me and the wife-o will be drawing out this weekend.

Last night I was sitting around chatting with my roommate when he reminded me of a story involving a mutual friend of ours. As it happened my roommate and our friend were spending a fall evening at a local pub getting good and drunk. On the way home they we’re laughing riotously about something or other and our friend, out of jubilation, slapped a pumpkin off of its perch on a step, causing it to roll, unbroken mind you, into a neighboring yard. The two ruffians continued walking along until about half a block later they heard a commotion behind them and turned to see a barefoot and shirtless, mulleted and mustachioed man sprinting at them as he hurled insults and slurs. Before they knew what was happening the man was on top of them punching our friend repeatedly in the face and screaming that he wanted five dollars for the offense of knocking a pumpkin into his yard. Apparently there was some contentious haggling that followed but in the end the man did receive his five dollars and all parties went on their way.
The man clearly overreacted, something men are often want to do. It got me thinking about how men overreact, over engineer, over everything just about everything and how that applies to the season that is upon us and particularly Halloween. Here then are some results of my search:

This one’s a bit long but the idea is awesome:

As I mentioned in a previous post, I cleaned my kegerator lines last night and, inadvertantly, my entire keg fridge. It’s odd how, as you grow more rings around your trunk, you come to truly relish and enjoy the simpler things in life. I love the time I get to spend with my kegerator, disassembling and cleaning, tuning and upgrading. It brings me closer to my beer and makes my degenerative alcoholism seem far more productive than it otherwise would.

As I was letting the BLCsit in my lines last night, I decided it was time to change out my tap handles. Baseball season is over (for the Cubs) so it’s time to take down my baseball tap handle and I feel I’ve given my Obama tap handle (sorry these are sold out) more than ample time on it’s premiere stage. I’m holding out for health care reform to pass before giving him the auspicious throne atop my kegerator again (although, HEY! Congrats on the Nobel Peace Prize Barry!).

So, to replace at least one of my two tap handles I made purchase of the She-Devil tap handle from kegworks (Apparently, I got their last one as it now shows that it is out of stock, I’ve posted a link to another site that carries it, although it is a few dollars more expensive). I have had my eye on this vicious little demon tramp for quite some time now and thought “what better time than the Halloween season to collect this novelty beer tap handle.” I love Halloween novelties and treats, especially when they help me drink.

One thing I did notice while combing the internet for a novelty tap handle that suited my fairly specific profile of classy-yet-kitschy-without-being-cliched is that there really aren’t too many great novelty beer tap handles available out there. I think I’m going to put our metal-smithing friends over at the League of Troubled Souls to work making some sweetly evil tap handles to fill this achey breaky void.

If you know of any great novelty tap handles or have some suggestions for the LTS custom jobs post them in the comments.

I was trying to find something to get us into the seasonal mood here at OA, running search strings on halloween+beer+fishing+skateboarding+yadda+yadda. My rigorous bending of these here internet tubes and subsequent shaking there ofs were producing a whole lot of nothing. But then… I came across this.

This is kind of like the Halloween beer commercial equivalent of COMPLETE wouldn’t you say?

Somebody call Steve Albini.