‘If ye love beer greater than wine, the cold and quenching taste greater than fruity flavored concoctions, go home from this tap room in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your business.’
Alright, I honestly avoid consuming (or selling) Sam Adams products - but enough is enough already.
First came your Triple Bock. At $25 a pop per 7 oz bottle (retail microbrew bar price), you must’ve had Beantown yuppies creaming in their pants. ‘Biffy, you must try this. It tastes like a port and has 17% Alcohol! We’re sooo thahh’. BAck in the late 90s,when a sales associate of mine - who would only order this crap when he could put it on his expense account - offered me a taste in Denver a few years ago, the bartender wasn’t all too pleased about wiping it off the bar, the shit was thick and sticky too.
You wanna make chocolate flavored beer? At least it doesn’t accelerate tooth decay.
You wanna make ales that pay homage to Miss WinterSpringSummerFall or Frankie Valli? I have no problem with that, just don’t expect me to drink it.
Yeah, I realize there are different stokes for different folks, but how many fruit flavored beers are necessary? I’ll concede the fact Berliners pour raspberry sauce in their weissbier (blech) - but is that a valid reason for Cherry Wheat?
But now, Sam Adams, you’ve completely crossed the line from brewery to winery. Selling Utopias, with 25% alcohol for over $100 per bottle, all I can do is wonder, ‘what’s next?’. People in The Hop Devil Grill, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, are paying $12 a shot for this stuff (but that’s a separate rant in and of itself). I’ll concede the copper bottle is an eye grabbing novelty, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I buy one.
12 bucks a shot hmmmm. I guess the three shots of Utopia I had at the Great American Beer fest( http://www.beertown.org/events/gabf/index.htm) last year alone paid for the ticket, and all the rest of the yummy beer was free.
You know, I’ve had a bottle of Tripple Bock sitting in my fridge for the better part of 4 years now. Maybe more. Don’t know why I keep it. I’ve had it so long it seems a shame to open it now. Can’t remember the original purchase price. Is it really $25 now? Come to think of it, just the other day I was thinking I’d wait until this winter and make a slow cooked stew with it, just to finally get rid of it. :eek:
For what it’s worth, I like Sam Adams seasonal brews. Keeps the beer from tasting like the same old thing after a while.
I guess this isn’t the place to mention that a) I have a case of Triple Bock in the cellar, or b) weissbier mit schuss is absolutely wonderful on a hot summer day.
Sam Adams has managed to carve out an interesting niche for themselves - they market themselves as a microbrew, but they don’t actually do their own brewing and their distribution more closely resembles the major breweries than the smaller ones. Essentially, they’re mass-marketing the illusion of a small business.
Personally I think their stuff tastes nasty, though I haven’t tried their Triple Bock or Utopia.
My biggest beef with Sam Adams is their beers don’t really match the style labels they give. They’re usually milder or weaker than what they should be. The best example is their Scotch Ale which has no more body that a typical English Mild. I’ll give them props for the Triple Bock though. A good barley wine is hard to make. A homebrewer friend made one that he’d sample every year or so to chart the development. I got to try it at about 6 years old and it was getting pretty good at that point. It’s certainly not a thirst quencher, though.
And the Cranberry Lambic, though decent, sure as hell isn’t a lambic.
I’ve had maybe 4-5 bottles of the Triple Bock, the oldest aged to something like 8 years, and the stuff just screams “maple syrup” to my palate. Impressive accomplishment, not really my taste.
Lambic, I understand, can basically only be made in Belgium, because it is fermented by a yeast that is endemic there.
As for the rest of Sam Adams products, I find them excellent. I certainly don’t mind that they have a “large brewery” distribution network. It means I can find decent beer even in shitty little towns like mine.
Oh come one folks. What are we comparing Sam to here? It is self evident that the majority of Sam products are not crap compared to the US mass marketted beers. Boston Lager is not a perfect beer, but like Ogre I greatly appreciate the ability to buy a decent beer most anywhere in the US now.
Sure, their specialty beers are pretty weak, but at least they make some vague effort to expand palates. I think of them as gateway beers. Try a Sam’s cherry, and you may try a New Glarus cherry. You will then say "Jeebus! That’s one hell of a beer! Never drinking Sam’s cherry again!"Lousy Wisconsinians, sucking up all the New Glarus product so they have no reason to navigate Iowa’s labyrinthine beer laws to sell i there.)
As for Utopias, I also got a shot free at a beer festival! Great Taste of the Midwest. It was quite interesting. The initial taste was too bourbonny for me, but the aftertaste was really nice. Whole group agreed that it would take several years to finish that big $100 bottle as you just would never want to drink much of it in a sitting.
