Autumn is a great season for craft beer. You have warm days, cold days and everything in between which means you can grab that imperial stout you've been waiting all summer to drink or you can finish off your stock piles of summer brew. With that said, though, certain styles are much more autumnal than others. Many people wait all year for this season and the flavors that come with it: Pumpkin, fresh hop and the malty goodness of Oktoberfest biers.

So, what we want to know is, what style of Fall-specific beer have you liked this season? You can get an IPA any day...these are the beers your can really only get at this time of the year. Vote below then tell us how you voted and why on Twitter, on Facebook or in the comments below the poll. Cheers!

As part of my recent trip to Oktoberfest I also made a stop in Prague for four days. The beer culture in Prague is fascinating. Beer is ingrained into the culture in ways that I hadn’t seen before, however the beer that’s ingrained is Pilsner Urquel. People clearly have a lot of pride in this beer and yes, it does in fact taste better in Prague than it does stateside.

Before I left for my trip to Prague I asked Chris Lohring from Notch Brewing where I needed to go on my trip. His first response was U Zlateho Tyrga (The Golden Tiger). On my cab ride from the airport to the hotel I began discussing beer with out driver. I told him of my love of good beer and this seemed to draw an odd response from him. Apparently he was in New York and was told to try Budweiser as a good American beer. Nooooooooooooooo! my brain screamed.  I quickly assured him this was not the best America had to offer. He seemed skeptical but I pressed on and mentioned we were planning on going to U Zlateho Tyrgra. This instantly grabbed his attention and he mentioned two things to us. First off this was a fantastic bar, and secondly they don't really care for Americans. This is a local bar and they don't really care for anyone else...challenge accepted.

The bar is barely marked on the outside, there's no sign but there is a gold tiger above the door. As we walked in we saw rough wood tables, a man pouring more beers than I thought possible, and no Americans. We had no idea what to do. There was no apparent system for seating, so we watched for a moment. People just seemed to push their way through and seat themselves. Eventually we moved towards a table, and asked if it was OK to sit, the waiter nodded begrudgingly. It was clear to us that we were viewed as Americans and they didn't really want us there. We were dedicated to our cause and were not ready to admit defeat yet. You don't order beer at this bar, you can only not order beer. What do I mean by that? Well as soon as you sit down you get a round of Pilsner Urquel. Unless you put a coaster over your beer you keep getting more beer, it's a pretty fantastic system. As we were figuring out this system we noticed another American trying to figure things out as well, we did the only sensible thing we could do and invited him to join us. Little did he know what he was in for.

We kept getting beers, round after round and then realized we needed food. We asked for food menus a few times and were ignored, but we hung in there. After a few more rounds we seemed to have gained some respect and we able to order some food. We got some "beer cheese" (some magical combination of funky cheese, butter, onions, mustard and paprika), some thinly sliced beef with horseradish and mustard and some spicy sausage with peppers and pickled onions. Then something great happened, a local gestured to us asking if he could sit at our table. This place was packed and clearly hard to get a seat, we openly welcome him to our table. This seemed to gain us some more street cred. Our new table-mate spoke little to no English, but we were able to work things out, he was an incredibly kind man in his 50s named Milos. He seemed to appreciate our beer consumption and we got a solid thumbs up from him on our choice of food.

As we spent more time in the bar we bonded over great food and beer with Milos, despite our language barrier. Milos showed us a video on his cell phone of him roasting a whole pig on a spit. As we sat and drank Milos ordered some food. What arrived at the table moments later was some sort of thin pork fried in batter. We asked him was and instead of trying to explain he cut bites of it for each of us to try. I’ve never felt so welcomed into a culture than that moment in time. We immediately ordered him a beer as thanks. Oh and that other American we invited to our table, well as we got talking it turned out he follows us on twitter. He's from Chicago, was on a business trip to Warsaw Poland, and took a quick trip to Prague and we happened to connect. Crazy.

We walked into U Zlateho Tyrga clear outsiders, but over the course many many beers and some shared food we were accepted into what was clearly a local establishment. We were sure to tip well as we left, our waiter gave me a appreciative tap on the shoulder as a thanks and we left knowing we had just had a once in a lifetime experience.

This past weekend I attended an event to benefit Valley Malt’s Brewer Supported Agriculture (BSA) program (it works similarly to a CSA, except it provides malted grain to brewers) at Meadhall in Cambridge, MA. The event showcased craft beers from seven brewers that participated in this year's BSA program. One of the brews I got to try was Ipswich Ale Brewery’s Local Harvest 5 Mile Stock Ale. This is the first in the series of 5 Mile beers where each will be brewed using an ingredient from within five miles of the brewery. This one uses Cascade dry hops grown in Ipswich’s own hop yard. Also, the beer is brewed using malted barley from Massachusetts farms and malted by Valley Malt, one of the coolest beer related companies we know of! With that said, let’s try the beer!

Five Mile Stock Ale pours with a taupe, puffy, big-bubbled head about three fingers that quick recedes to one and hangs around pretty much throughout the drink. This sits atop a murky brown, orangey body of beer. This looks like something I’d expect to drink in Autumn. Appears to have some body and some weight behind it, but not the impact of an imperial stout or anything

While pouring, I couldn’t help but notice that this thing smells strongly! Even standing back taking pictures you can smell the malt that this brings to the table! Up close, there’s a nice biscuit aroma that sits just under piney, locally grown Cascade hops. Brewed with malt from Massachusetts farms and malted by our own Valley Malt in Hadley, MA, the focus here is on the malt for sure, though...as it should be in a stock ale. Overall impression? I want to drink it because it smells amazing!

And let me tell you, the taste does not disappoint! This is a great fall beer. Not that it’s a pumpkin beer or a fresh hop beer or any special theme like that. It’s just a delicious beer with some solid body that isn’t quite the beast of a brew I look for in winter. You can really taste the Cascade dry hops that Ipswich grew in their hop yard. And the malt! The malt is great! Every brew I’ve had so far using Valley Malt has had a minor similarity that I’m going to chalk up to the local character of the malt. It’s almost a spice to the beer, but not quite. This is a great beer, as I’ve come to expect from Ipswich Brewery. I’d suggest if you find it on tap or draft that you get some immediately as it’s a limited run and, because of the capacity constraints of Valley Malt, not a lot was made. It’s going to sell quick, too, because it’s delicious!

I picked this bottle up at Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont.

If you live in the New England area it’s been hard to ignore the hype around Maine Beer Company’s recently re-released “Lunch” IPA. Our local store, Craft Beer Cellar, got a scant 18 bottles of this beer. In order to help out their more faithful customers they tweeted out a sign-up list for a chance to pick up a bottle. Once on that list it was first come first serve for those who showed up, limit one per person. To those not entrenched in the beer community that must sound like a lot of hoops to jump through, and it would have been if the beer wasn’t very impressive. I’ll jump to it and confirm that all the hoop jumping was totally worth it on this beer.

I could smell the hops as soon as I started pouring the beer into my glass. Strong grapefruit notes came through followed by hints of pine and tangerine. As I put the glass to my lips the hop aroma was so intense that I could taste the beer before it even touched my tongue. As I took my first sip the grapefruit flavors rushed in, but then this beer got surprising. At first sip your month is inundated with hops but just as soon as you think it’s going to be a hop bomb the malt comes through. It has a shockingly clean finish, each sip felt as complex as my first which is really rare with very hoppy beers. I often feel my palate wear down with heavily hopped IPAs but that just never happened. There’s an amazing toasted malt flavor that rounds out the finish, it’s not sweet it’s just smooth and pleasant. The malt character of this beer is what ended up winning me over. It’s relatively easy to create a beer with a ton of hops, it’s much harder to create a beer with lots of hops that feels balanced but not sweet. That balance is what makes this a great IPA vs a good IPA.

My only complaint is that now that I know how good it is I can’t get any more. The next shipment isn’t until December 10th, so for now I’ll just have to wait. If you’re fortunate enough to find some in your area grab it! If you're reading this and you work for Maine Beer company, please make more!