smuttynose pumpkin ale

Looks to be a fall seasonal beer and I would probably classify this more of a spice ale than a fruit one.

I haven't tried Smuttynose's Pumpkin Ale, but this is true of every pumpkin ale I'vwe tried, such as Dogfish Head's. They don't seem to be flavored with pumpkin at all but with the spices used in pumpkin pie.

I has the, um, honor to judge six pumpkin/spice beers in competition this past weekend. All of them listed pumpkin as an ingredient. Only one had a bit of a vegetal undercurrent that may have been pumpkin. It makes me think pumpkin is not really needed if spice is used.

With the amount of pumpkin that I have to use in a cereal mash for just

That's because pumpkin doesn't have much flavor of its own, and the flavor most people associate with pumpkin is in fact the nutmeg, cinnamon and other spices typically used with pumpkin pie. If a brewery brewed a pumpkin ale wihtout those spices, people would be whining that there's no pumpkin, even if there were seeds floating around in the thing.

-Steve

pumpkin, even

Probably, but pumpkin does have flavor, and if a brewer calls his beer Pumpkin Ale, I think there should be some pumpkin in it. If all that's been added to the beer is spices, it would be more accurately described as Spiced Ale, or something along those lines.

Just had Elysian's Pumpkin Ale at a brewer's dinner; it was served with pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. The batch was brewed with 150 pounds of pumpkin, but pumpkin just doesn't add a huge amount of flavor to the final product - at least when it comes to beer. With the spicing, though, it complemented the dessert well enough.