I'll start as I usually do when discussing a beer brewed by a macro-brewery---I had my reservations, I prefer to support smaller breweries, I didn't expect much, etc etc. Well... this is a good beer. Anheuser-Busch, hiding beneath the cloak of Michelob and rakishly twirling its mustache, does some things right every once in a while. It's almost as if Michelob is their Mr. Hyde who only comes out at night, makes decently good beers, and then recedes into the Dickensian, foggy streets of a watery beer London morning. Or something. You get the picture despite my unwieldy metaphor*. Amber Bock is pretty good... their regular 'ol Michelob is fine and Michelob Light is light on taste but very refreshing. Ultra is worthless, of course, and I have yet to get my hands on their new Pale Ale but this, the Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale... well, I've gotten two six-packs so far. The color is a rich, dark orange-amber. Man, I really should have taken a picture of the glass (meh---it was dark out and... I am powerfully lazy). It's a lovely colored beer with a sturdy, almost creamy white head on its shoulders that hangs around for the first few sips. The aroma is dominated by malt and spice. The flavor is almost like semi-sweet pie was used during the brewing process; like some wacky brewmaster used 80% 2-row malts and 20% pumpkin pie. And then rounded things out with a mild hop addition just to keep the sweetness in check. The 5.5% A.B.V. is basically unnoticeable but surely provides a bit of bite to the brew. Hints of cinnamon and ginger and the lightest clove and coriander notes further shade the complexity of the beer. At the finish, the mildly sweet pumpkin bread/pie flavor returns in all its subtle malty goodness, bidding you take another sip and buy another six-pack. So... well done, you sneaky mega brewery. Next back to Stone or Otter Creek for me, but well done. I doff my bowler and twirl my ebony cane to you. * Really more of a simile as I led with the "as if" there... but only a pompous asshat would point that out in an annotation below the main text.