Cambridge Brewing Company’s Great American Pumpkin Ale tastes like fall. It tastes like the color of the foliage — orange, ochre, amber, yellow, red. And it tastes like pumpkin. A whiff of hoppy bitterness tempers the sweet spice of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and ginger. And this balance elevates the ale over the seasonal crop of sickly, saccharine-spiced beers. Creamy, light, and smooth, with an evanescent head, it’s like drinking pumpkin pie, or, to get a bit more festive about it, like gamboling around a pumpkin patch. And CBC relies on a couple of local patches, using 125 pounds of organic sugar pumpkins for each batch of brew. Pumpkin Ale, which flows through Thanksgiving, is available by the pint at a variety of area bars and restaurants, and by the half-gallon growler at CBC.

Available through Thanksgiving for $4.25 for a pint and $9.90 for a half-gallon growler at Cambridge Brewing Company, 1 Kendall Square, in Cambridge. Call (617) 494-1994.