The best pumpkin beers are the most unexpected. F. Martin Ramin
for The Wall Street Journal  When the leaves change color, beer
store shelves turn orange to match. It's pumpkin beer season,
and the trap is set. Each year, we can't resist plucking a
bottle or two, but like a bowl of candy corn, their festive hue
belies their taste: too sweet, too sour and sodden with
perfume-y spice.  It doesn't have to be this way. The best
pumpkin beers are the most unexpected. Far from pie-in-a-bottle,
they blend in maple syrup, dark chocolate and the vanilla
smoothness of oak barrels—dressing the humble gourd in elaborate
costumes that buck almost 400 years of tradition.  Long
considered the candy-corn of seasonal beers (colorful, but not
so tasty), pumpkin beers are starting to prove otherwise.
William Bostwick reviews some of his favorites on Lunch Break as
Wendy Bounds and Connor Doughtery taste test the brews.  Pumpkin
beer is as old as American beer itself. The first settlers from
Europe, having braved the wild Atlant