"Cascade is well-known in American craft beer circles as some of the most expensive and well developed sours—truly making it a high end product,” Monteiro explains. “Their pumpkin ale undergoes some of the most rigorous aging processes available to brewers. First, batches of a Belgian Quad are aged in bourbon and brandy barrels for up to 22 months with pumpkin and spices and then they left to sour. Finally, the two separate barrels are blended together, creating this masterpiece of a brew. The taste begins very sour on the first sip, but moves pretty quickly into pumpkin spice territory. The finish clearly showcases the barrels, moving from the spices to a warm vanilla oak from the bourbon, and finally finishing on a secondary dose of spice, this time from the brandy barrels.”
- Forbes "5 of the Best Pumpkin Beers to Drink This Fall" (September 2017)
"Portland's master of barrel-aged sours treats its beers with the care of wine, with bottle-aging transforming different vintages of its more coveted beers. And Pumpkin Smash is certainly coveted: it's a blend of the brewery's blond and quad ales that sits in bourbon and brandy barrels for up to two years, chilling with a bunch of pumpkin from a local farm. The result is a complex beer, with layers of sour and spice and more that just keep transforming over time. This is a special-occasion beer. But as "special occasion" is a relative term, that means it's as good at Thanksgiving as it is carving pumpkins on a Tuesday morning."