The problem with most pumpkin beers is that they are so sweet, cloying, and heavily spiced that they taste like someone dumped a can of pumpkin pie filling into your beer. (And a sub-par, filler beer to start with.) Thankfully this is not the case at the Elysian, who deliver a very subtle pumpkin and spice beer, the Night Owl. Courtesy of the Elysian’s website, here is the recipe for this fall classic:

Brewed with 150 lbs. of pumpkin in each batch. Made with Pale, Munich and Crystal malts green and roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin in the mash, boil and fermenter. Bittered with Horizon hops. Spiced in conditioning with nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger and allspice.

And with the recent partnership between New Belgium Brewing and Elysian, I can now segue into a sneak preview of New Belgium’s, uh, newest beer: Giddy Up!

As the label states, this is an ale brewed with lemon peel and infused with espresso. (Is the lemon/espresso combo a café romano?) Beer and coffee together?!? What’s not to love? I could not discern the lemon flavor, but the addition of the espresso to the beer was divine. Again, like the Elysian pumpkin ale, the flavor of the infused ingredient was present, but did not distract from the fact that this is a damn good ale on its own.