Beer of the Week

The beer: Voodoo Ranger Atomic Pumpkin

Brewed by: New Belgium Brewing Company, Fort Collins, Colorado

Description (from the website): "At 6.4% ABV, Atomic Pumpkin Ale is perfectly positioned to capture the fall beer drinker who wants more than just an ordinary Pumpkin or Oktoberfest beer."

Would I buy it again?: This is what I get for not reading the label carefully. I saw Atomic Pumpkin, and I thought it would be a beer with a whole lot of pumpkin flavor. What I received was a spicy beer, and that's just not what I want. Spicy and beer do not go together in my opinion. Now, it's not that spicy, but that just makes it worse. They went to all the trouble and didn't even go that far. So what we have here is a pumpkin beer that doesn't taste like pumpkin and is spicy but not really. I would absolutely not buy this again.

The Smallest Green In The World

Maybe not, but this is a very tiny green. Maybe 30 feet in diameter.

That's from a course I played last weekend in Westminster, Maryland, called McDaniel College Golf Club. It's a 9 hole course associated with the college of the same name, and while it's not worth a full review, I thought this green was worth a mention. The course is shoved on the side of a hillside, squeezed between the college and a road. It's just 2,000 yards and not in great shape, so it's not something you'd go out of your way to see, but it's definitely got some funky quirk to it. And at $12 to play 9 on a weekend, it's not too pricey either. I'd play there again.