Goody's Brew Returns With Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla

The returning amber fall beer is back on the Medina taproom list, carrying pumpkin spice and a vanilla the brewery bothered to name by origin. Smooth and lightly sweet, by its own account.

Style: Pumpkin Spice Amber
Release Date: 2026-09-15
ABV: N/A
Planted Flag Brewing (Medina, OH)

Planted Flag Brewing is turning its taproom over to fall, and Goody's Brew is the returning piece of that changeover. The Medina, Ohio, operation describes it as its amber fall beer, back for the season with pumpkin spice and Madagascar bourbon vanilla, and calls the result smooth, lightly sweet and full of warm fall flavor.

The vanilla is the detail worth slowing down for. Most spiced fall beers list vanilla and leave it at that. Naming Madagascar bourbon vanilla specifies an actual thing: bourbon here refers to the vanilla variety and the islands it is grown on, not to whiskey or barrel aging. It is the variety most drinkers already have in mind when they think of vanilla at all, and it runs creamy and rounded rather than sharp or smoky.

That choice fits the base it is going into. An amber beer brings caramel and a little toast from the malt on its own, which gives spice and vanilla something to sit against instead of floating on top of a lighter beer. It is also why the brewery can describe the result as lightly sweet rather than dessert-like: the sweetness has somewhere to attach.

Goody's Brew is pouring now. It arrives on a list in transition, alongside the brewery's Oktoberfest and a new hard cider, with the summer cocktail menu on its way out and Destiny Farmhouse Chili returning September 22.

Editor’s Take

There is a small and entirely avoidable moment of confusion built into this beer, and it is a pleasure. Madagascar bourbon vanilla, read quickly, sounds like somebody parked the beer in a whiskey barrel. Nobody did. Bourbon is the name of the vanilla variety, borrowed from the old name of the island where it was first cultivated, and it has no relationship to Kentucky whatsoever. What it does have is the exact flavor that essentially everyone in North America pictures when they picture vanilla. So Planted Flag has gone out of its way to specify the most familiar vanilla on earth and put it into pumpkin spice, the most familiar fall flavor on earth. This is not a beer hunting for novelty. It knows precisely which shelf it wants to stand on, and it has walked over and stood there on purpose.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.