Ossuary Puts Two Different Holidays in the Same Glass

Pumpkin spice is an autumn signal. Eggnog is a December one. They occupy separate corners of the year by long convention, and the arrival of one is generally taken as evidence that the other is still safely some way off.

Adroit Theory has put them in the same beer, and released it in the second week of September. Ossuary [Pumpkin Spice Eggnog] is a cream stout carrying both, and the brewery is candid about where the idea came from: the sheer volume of pumpkin spice on grocery shelves, which it concedes is a bit much, followed immediately by the observation that this particular combination still sounds good.

The two flavors are less opposed than the calendar implies. Pumpkin spice is a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and clove, and contains no pumpkin at all. Eggnog leans on cream, vanilla and nutmeg. Nutmeg sits in both, and the warm-spice character that defines one is a broadened version of what defines the other. Combining them is less a collision than a merger.

The base style is doing real work here too. A cream stout carries lactose, which yeast cannot ferment, so it stays in the finished beer as sweetness and body. For an eggnog impression in particular that matters, since eggnog is defined largely by richness. A dry stout would leave the idea with nothing to sit on.

The name belongs to Adroit Theory's broader catalogue of releases titled after the darker end of the dictionary. An ossuary is a container or room where bones are kept, which is a long way from a seasonal latte, and entirely in keeping with a brewery that files its beers under that sort of heading as a matter of course.

Ossuary [Pumpkin Spice Eggnog] is available now in Purcellville, in pours and crowlers. At 27 crowlers it is the largest of the three crowler releases this week.