Karen Kölsch?
It’s well worth the trip the yearly meeting. Lots of fun, and yummy fresh beers.
I’m another person who likes many craft beers and imports, but never particularly cared for Sam Adams.
It’ll always be in my heart for introducing me in the early-90s to the fact that beer could actually taste good. I was pretty much a hard alcohol drinker until I discovered Sam Adams, as the usual macrobrews just turned me off so badly. My annual Christmas trips home from college and later abroad required my first meal home to be an Italian beef and first beer home was a Sam Adams Honey Porter. Beers all got a lot better very quickly in the mid-late-90s, but that was still my go-to and always felt like home. I don’t even know if Sam Adams makes the same honey porter they did back then, as I don’t think I’ve had it since the early 00s, nor do I even recall seeing it at the store in the 00s onward. I like the fact that most of their beers are not really hop bombs. (Don’t get me wrong–I loved IPAs and IIPAs, but there’s only so many I could take before my sense of taste was obliterated. But even their IPA wasn’t like crazy hoppy or anything, and that was a later addition to their-line up. They had something called a Boston Ale back then, which was not like today’s APAs or IPAs in terms of hops. Oh, I just remembered, I liked their black lager quite a bit, too.)
Their light beer is also the only light beer I’ve ever really liked (and it’s a little bit heavier than most lights, so that’s to be expected), and I currently enjoy their Just the Haze non-alcoholic IPA.
Same thing happened to New Belgium Fat Tire. Was a nice drinkable amber. One of my go to beers. But they changed it.
A few months ago I and my wife ordered it. The bartender asked if we had had it recently and we replied no. He brought us a couple of shot glasses of it to taste.
Umm… No. Not sure what I got instead. But I’ll never go back. It was horrible.
Ah, the wine in the convenient single-serving glass. Much like 2# Cheetos bags and half-gallon Ben & Jerry’s containers.
Single servings done right.
QUITERS!!!
QUITE 
I still drink plenty thoroughly thank you. Just not (much) beer. Made up for by plenty of the other stuff. 
Blame that pussy quitter pancreas I now have. My goal now is to send my liver to the same early grave. 
LOL!
Funny to think that I’ve now been sober almost as long as I drank. It made it somewhat easier to stop when I concluded that in my 25-ish years of drinking, I consumed more than enough for a couple of lengthy lifetimes. 
Oh to have ever learned moderation!
Newcastle Brown had the same fate fall upon it. There was a thread on the Dope about it, too. I managed to get a hold of the last of the original Newcastle and one of the new to try them side by side. To be fair, I did not like the original Newcastle Brown ale at all. I actually liked the new version better. But to those who had a lifelong relationship with Newcastle Brown, I can understand being quite upset. It really was a markedly different product. (I can’t remember the details anymore, but I imagine this was just a change for the American market. It’s brewed by Lagunitas here in Chicago for the US market, and you can tell with the recipe difference. I can’t believe Brits going along with the change.)
I always enjoyed Newcastle, but that was back in the ~1980s-90s, so probably pre-change.
The standard affectionate nickname then was “Newkie brown”. When I traveled to England I heard them derisively refer to it as “Pukie brown”. Apparently for as much as the Americans thought it was fine authentic imported English ale, the English thought it was local swill.
Yes, well pre-change. This happened within the last five years…2019 according to Google.
We called it ‘Nuke-Sul’. Learned it from a Brit.
All the different beers y’all are talking about cracks me up. If I started going into my favorites nobody would recognize them. ConnyCreek Pat Hazy anyone? How’s about Allusion One Inning More, or Leaning Cask Zoomies?
I Homebrew something I call simply Snapper.
It’s an over-hopped Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone. Yes. Over-hopped. Wrap your head around that, then wrap your fist around the Liter sized mugs I serve it from.
Samuel Adams? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!!
I’m a hophead, so I’m in.
The original Sam Adams was a gateway from traditional American lagers like Bud, and really played up the Reinheitsgebot marketing angle. From a marketing point of view, it was genius. Contract brew to gain market share when craft beers first started.
For those of you that didn’t come of beer drinking age in the 70’s and 80’s, there was fuck all choice. Sam Adams was definitely much better that Michelob (the premium beer), but considered weak sauce at best compared with Anchor Steam or Sierra Nevada. And, Sam Adams was East Coast, versus the West Coast innovative beers. In the early 80’s, I would have ranked Sam Adams on par with Henry Wienhard’s. Again, much preferred over Lucky Lager, but not in the same category as the premium craft beers.
I remember when the expat grocery store in Shanghai got in a shipment of Sam Adams around 1999, and sold it for cheap, my palate used to Chinese light lagers thought it was pretty awesome for the first case or two. But when put up against any decent micro brewery beer, Sam Adams is lacking.
Heheh, over the years I have enjoyed Rolling Rock as a light, inoffensive non-sweet beer with a dry-ish finish. I had a girlfriend who’s dad was from Pennsylvania who thought I was a total cretin for drinking it.
He might still be right, but it wasn’t because of the beer I drank.
Gimme.
Meh. I prefer Heineken. If I do have to drink a Sam Adams, it’s gotta be their pumpkin ale.