Some beers are just meant for certain seasons—or temperatures. While Oktoberfests and pumpkin beers are synonymous with fall weather and football, many other seasonal offerings can get lost in the fray. Dogfish Head’s Punkin Ale is a staple of the Delaware brewery’s seasonal lineup, yet it’s a newer, apple pie-inspired cream ale release that might start driving bigger headlines soon. First released last November, Dogfish Head’s Suddenly Comfy Cream Ale is back again with an earlier fall release and a bevy of unique fall flavors that makes it immensely memorable. 

Dogfish Head was nice enough to send me a few bottles of Suddenly Comfy a few weeks back. At the time, the temps were still high and summer was still clinging on. As the Midwest is prone to do, the weather changed drastically—and so did my beer choices. Suddenly Comfy stands out due to its simplicity. Pouring a light brown with a bubbly, medium-height head, the first whiff of Suddenly Comfy made me look back at my oven to ensure that I wasn’t baking an apple pie at the moment. The aroma is so intensely apple-forward that I found myself smelling this beer a few times before I even took my first sip. That aroma, of warm apple pie and a dose of apple cider, lingers throughout the entire drinking experience and seems to fill the whole room in the process. 

While the apple aroma is huge, the flavors underneath are just as important and do well to balance out this spiced fruit ale. At 8%, you’d expect the taste to be a bit sharper but the smooth body, mixed with a bevy of delicious baking spice ingredients—Saigon cinnamon, spice, and Madagascar vanilla beans—ensure that your palate is more fixated on the bevy of flavors than the alcohol content. While apple pie is definitely the most recognizable flavor due to the ingredient combination found inside, I found myself getting bigger notes of apple cider as I drank through the bottle.

That said, the intensity of flavor here mandates that you drink—and savor—this one slowly. There’s a lot to process flavor-wise. Once the beer warms up, I started to get bigger notes of cinnamon and spice, making the apple flavor a willing backup singer for a moment. The apple fades a bit at the end but still stays within shouting distance. Ultimately, if you want to drink a beer that reminds you of your grandma’s fresh-baked apple pie, this is it. Heck, I might substitute my second serving of Thanksgiving pie for this beer. 

On second thought—I’ll probably keep both. Suddenly Comfy is available now across Dogfish Head’s nationwide distribution footprint in 4-packs of 12oz bottles. Cheers! 

Feature image courtesy of Dogfish Head.

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