James Taylor once penned a tune called Country Road. I’m not exactly sure that it was Taylor’s intention, but when I hear Country Road I can’t help but imagine myself walking through an apple orchard in the heart of autumn. Perhaps I’m some sort of modern day Johnny Appleseed, walking along a deserted October highway and handing out smartphones to indigent children. “Help us, Techno-Papa, help us! We want to download apps and steal music and message our friends in Vietnam! We’re tired of burning these orange leaves to make smoke-signals! Techno-Papa, we need you!”

And I’ll look at these children, plagued by rickets and smiling their Pepsi-stained smiles, and I’ll deliver. Against the backdrop of autumn, decay and decrepitude as beautiful and wondrous, I’ll hand these diseased scamps the modern-magic they need to survive.

Or, at the very least, to die with smiles on their faces.

Is this what James Taylor thought of when he wrote Country Road? Probably not. But the motherfucker spent so many years on heroin, I wouldn’t rule it out.

Tonight, I’m celebrating dragon-chasin’ pop-song daydreams of autumnal techno-wizardry. It feels good, real good, but it’s parching me out. So it looks like I’m washing these dope-sick delusions down with a cold can of Autumnation.

The Sixpoint Brewery has released Autumnation as an attempt to hop into the fall-seasonal battle royale, swing away at the enemies’ faces, and pray that some muthafuckah drops dead. But it’s a brutal ring of death, and the new kid on the block has some stiff competition, foes that revel in swinging fucking maces and broadswords.

So, how does the challenger describe himself? Well, let’s take a look:

Autumn ushers in an annual rebirth with a full harvest, longer nights, and in many cases, a new wardrobe. We’re celebrating the bounty of the season with a new beer that’s coming out in cans this week – Autumnation. Brewed with pumpkin, ginger and white pepper, and wet-hopped with just-harvested Citra hops from the oldest continually farmed hop farm in the country, it’s a burst of fresh, seasonal spices trapped in a 16-ounce. can.

If I’m not mistaken, the Autumnation wants to straddle the line between pumpkin-brew and reliable Oktoberfest-punch. This certainly sounds like a dirty alley worth venturing into unarmed, but the only way to find out for sure is to stumble into it. In other words, to drank away.

Therefore, that is precisely what I did.

Before introducing the bubbly fun-soda to my brain, I inspected the container itself. The sixteen-ounce can is definitely well-designed, filling my hand with an orange metal-rocket that makes me want to drink outside while an October breeze slaps the arms shooting out of my sleeveless hoodie. The aluminum container comes across as a futuristic representation of quaint, our successors’ impression of our ancestors’ daily lives.

Simply put, the Autumnation can looks dope.

Fortunately, the liquid inside the can is just as beautiful. The beer pours as hazy orange, capped off with a dense head that provides a sort of foamy invitation. This beer looks like true art, containing New England foliage hues that’re bound to stun any prospector drinker.

After my ocular assessment, I moved onto the olfactory examination. This beer has a real floral scent to it, hitting my nose with a light flower-uppercut that is followed by a solid hoppy jab. It’s a nice odor, something I wouldn’t mind spreading about my apartment as a potpourri.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I can ride the Autumnation love train all the way to Tasteville. Curious as to why? Well, the long and short of it is that this brew is not what it makes itself out to be. In fact, I’m not quite sure that I’m even comfortable with its self-ascribed “seasonal” status.

When sampling, I definitely tasted the hops, which cut through to the forefront of my palate with an unmistakable dryness. However, I only detected the faintest of spices, searching to no avail for the pumpkin notes. I certainly picked up a smidge of ginger, and I think that a few sips hit the back of my throat with a spiciness, but this wasn’t the flavor-salad I was hoping for.

Moreover, I think that what Sixpoint has done is create a really solid India Pale Ale and packaged it as a fall seasonal. As such, I was looking for dark richness but only got hoppy dryness. So, if you are a fan IPAs (I’m not), this might be a brew worth investigating.

Autumnation looks and smells wonderful, and is even fortunate enough to have some of the sharpest packaging I’ve come across in awhile. But when push comes to shove, I don’t think that this is a beer to which I’ll be selling any of my precious fridge-real estate.

So when it comes to traversing James Taylor’s drug-addled mindscapes, I think I’ll have to stock my caravan with another sweet elixir.

The verdict: C+/B-