http://www.sloshspot.com/blog/12-22-2008/How-to-Know-If-You-Are-a-Beer-Snob-92

Friends, it’s a happy time when a Sam Adams mix pack comes out. As you all know, darker, winter beers are this Captain’s favorite, but summer/spring beers are wondrous too. The most recent mixed 12er I picked up has 2 of each of the following: Boston Lager, Sam Light, Blackberry Wit (finally!), Hefewiezen, Summer Ale and Pale Ale.

I’ve chosen to review that Pale Ale today because I have about three minutes. And the review will be simple, as this beer is basically exactly what you’d expect from a good American Pale Ale.

It’s hop forward but without any sharpness. There is no specific note of pine, grapefruit, etc—now, at times this sort of “general bitterness” would be less, say, intriguing than I like out of a beer. But if you’re eating a good meal, cooling down after exercise, starting off your morning, etc, sometimes you just want a good, balanced pale ale. Not a Pliny the Elder that you’ll taste for hours. Not a Ruinator that will, well, ruin your taste buds for the rest of the day. You just want a drinkable beer. That’s what this is. It’s a pleasantly bitter, refreshing beer with subtle, bready malt and firm but not overbearing hops. Serve it cold when the weather’s hot and then get me three to five more and a sandwich. Turkey club. Mustard, yeah. But no mayo. That stuff’s wack, man.

Those daring, beautiful people have done it again: Jim Koch and his Samuel Adams crew have made me scream like a little girl. Here’s an article (ahem) lifted from their newsletter. Why gild the lily, I asked myself. Read on. Oh, the beer of it all!

Pushing Beer’s Boundaries

In 1984 Jim Koch first brewed Samuel Adams Boston Lager® thus helping set the stage for American beer drinkers’ broadening interest in high-quality, full flavored brews. Now in 2009 we give you the Samuel Adams Imperial Series. Three distinct brews available in their own 4-packs, the Samuel Adams Imperial Series takes some of your favorite traditional beer styles and kicks them up a notch. Each is brewed with twice the amount of malt found in Samuel Adams Boston Lager. With more robust flavors these brews are intended to be savored and appreciated like you would a fine wine. This new series of beers will be offered year-round and includes Samuel Adams® Imperial White, Samuel Adams® Imperial Stout and Samuel Adams® Double Bock. Read on for a more detailed description of each…

9.2% ABV. Much bigger than your average stout, Samuel Adams Imperial Stout is a colossal beer inspired by centuries-old stouts. These traditional stouts were first brewed by 18th century English brewers for the Russian Imperial Court of Catherine the Great.

The first thing you notice about this beer is its color. It is black as night and almost completely opaque. Next is the cappuccino colored head: the aroma is filled with notes of coffee, smoky chocolate and licorice. And the taste delivers on all of those aromas, you can pick out each one.

Samuel Adams Imperial Stout was brewed with seven different varieties of malted barley, including Roasted Barley, Special B and smoked malt, each delivering its own unique flavor to the beer. But this beer is not a “malt bomb”. It is balanced by 50 BUs of East Kent Goldings hops that have a clean earthy aroma and pleasant bitterness. This is a colossal beer that should be savored and enjoyed.

10.3% ABV. Samuel Adams Imperial White expands the boundaries of the witbier style. While showcasing the traditional witbier aromas and hazy appearance, it delivers a bigger mouthfeel and body.

This beer has a lot going on. Brewed with 50% malted wheat and two-row Harrington and Metcalfe malted barley, Imperial White also includes a number of brewing spices, highlighted by the orange peel and coriander. The rest of the flavors come from the yeast and the alcohol. As this beer warms and opens up, you start to get complex flavors of dry fruits, exotic spices, and floral blossoms. These are flavors typically associated with wine and spirits, but they are showcased in Samuel Adams Imperial White as a bouquet of flavors. We knew we were going to enjoy watching this beer develop and we are thrilled with the result.

9.5% ABV. Over the past 20 years, Samuel Adams Double Bock has become one of the Samuel Adams Brewery’s most acclaimed beers. An enormous amount of two-row Harrington Metcalfe and Caramel 60 malts, half a pound per bottle, is used to brew this intense, rich lager. This beer is close to the idea of beer as “liquid bread.”

Samuel Adams Double Bock, as with all of the beers in the Imperial Series, is brewed using only first wort (wort that has not been sparged in the lauter tun) to obtain a liquid that has a very high sugar content, or gravity. This high gravity allows for a fuller body and higher alcohol content in the final beer. We age this beer for over 4 weeks to allow all of those intense flavors to develop and mature. For it’s inclusion in the Imperial Series, we’ve amped up the recipe for Samuel Adams Double Bock a little to reach 9.5% ABV, but you still get those complex rich flavors that define the style.

Its deep mahogany color, velvet smooth, rich yet slightly citrusy flavor and mouthfeel is a testament to the beer’s balance. In the past, Samuel Adams Double Bock has been available only for a short six-week period. The brewers have decided to make it available year-round with the other Big Beers in the Samuel Adams Imperial Series.

OK… so… Beck’s Premier Light:

Meh. Not so hot. Very light malt flavor, the littlest bit of floral-bitter hops in the finish. I mean, the beer has 64 calories—where is the flavor going to hide? It’s refreshing, it’s extremely “drinkable”* meaning… refreshing. That’s about it. But… when you add..

Hooooooowee that’s good sippin’! So the other day (OK like three weeks ago) it was some, oh, 80 degrees in January. So Mrs. Beer and I went for a long bike ride and worked up a summer sweat. Some of our neighbors had just moved out and while they will be missed, they left us beer. Beck’s Premier Light beer, to be precise. So in keeping with a tried and true German tradition, we took said lager and introduced to the beer a goodly dram of lemonade. OK look, no one is saying this was the least bit original or magical or anything… I’m just saying it was delicious. This process will kind of work with your garden variety cheap beers (not Natty cheap—think Coors or Miller) but in order to be really tasty, you need to use a real German beer. Or its American equivalent. Or beer from any other country that makes a similar beer.

But if you want a guaranteed good refreshing beverage, go with:

+

=

Uh…

Well, it’s damn good.

Captain out!

*When did that become an issue? This whole Bud Light “DRINKABILITY” campaign makes me vomit with rage!

So look… maybe it’s kind of an excuse for not sending out beernews to our millions of readers, but here are some ABV stats that I thought were interesting. Maybe you will too. So Amstel Light is… really light. Check it.

• • Guinness Draught: 4.0% (4.2% for bottled draught)
  • Beamish Stout: 3.8%
  • Dragon Stout: 6.8%
  • Amstel Light: 3.5%
  • Anchor Steam 4.9%
  • Blue Moon: 5.4%
  • Budweiser: 5.0%
  • Bud Light: 4.2%
  • Bud Light Lime: 4.2%
  • Busch: 4.6%
  • Coors: 5.0%
  • Coors Light: 4.2%
  • Coors Extra Gold: 5.0%
  • Corona Extra: 4.6%
  • Heineken: 5.4%
  • Heineken Light: 3.5%
  • Stone IPA: 6.9%
  • Stone Double Bastard: 10%
  • Icehouse: 5.0% and 5.5%
  • Labatt Blue: 5.0%
  • Michelob: 5.0%
  • Michelob Light: 4.3%
  • Michelob Ultra: 4.2%
  • MGD: 5.0%
  • Miller High Life: 5.5%
  • Miller Lite: 4.2%
  • Olde English 800: 5.9%
  • Olde English 800 Ice: 7.9%
  • Pyramid Pale Ale: 5.1%
  • Pyramid India Pale Ale: 6.7%
  • Pyramid Snow Cap: 7.0%
  • Red Dog: 5.0%
  • Redhook ESB: 5.8%
  • Sam Adams Boston Lager: 4.8%
  • Sam Adams Light: 4.0%
  • Sam Adams Double Bock: 8.5%
  • Shiner Bock: 4.4%
  • Shiner Light: 3.9%
  • Sapporo Reserve: 5.2%
  • Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: 5.7%
  • Sierra Nevada Bigfoot: 10%
  • Widmer Hefeweizen: 4.7%
  • Widmer Drop Top Amber Ale: 4.9%

This is one of the best stouts I have tried in months. It hangs right up there with some of Rogue and New Belgium and other such top-tier brewery’s offerings. It’s… delicious. Go… go get some. Don’t bother reading this post, just go—hey get back here! OK. That’s better. Have a seat… relax…

Alaskan’s Oatmeal Stout has all the right moves, see? It’s a deep brown when viewed in bright light, black in twilight haze or a tavern’s gloom. Or like… like if you’re at home but don’t have many lights on. Moving on. A nice tan head sits above the dark body, dissipating by the time you’re a third or so of the way in there.  And by the time you’re that far in, you’re well aware that this is a damn good brew.

The oatmeal, while not providing noticable flavors (which is pretty standard) gives the beer a rich, silky smoothness to the body that I found almost unique. Sure, I’ve had plenty of other rich stouts before, from creams to oatmeals to smoked etc etc… but this beer’s texture and mouthfeel stands out from the pack.

And the taste… is good. The aroma is roasty bread and a touch of caramel with a low bitterness profile. In the actual drink and finish the hop prescence asserts itself more, blending nicely with the malt notes. The flavor maintains the toasted bread and caramel aspects from the aroma, adding a coffee and burnt biterness in. Keep in mind all this is swirling around on that amazing body and be glad this beer comes in a six pack.

New year, new beers! We’re back and much the same as ever, beervolk! New Year’s Eve was an extravaganza of wonderful beers and I shall try to get to many of them in time. But I begin 2009 with a review of a good old brew from Yuengling. As I was on the east coast, finally my longing thirst for said brewery was slaked. Today we discuss their Lord Chesterfield Ale. Or rather I dogmatically drone; you read receptively.

You all know what we in the Hall think of Yuengling Lager. It is superb. Liquid pleasure. Their Lord Chesterfiled Ale is perhaps less distinct than the lager, but it is a very good beer. And what it lacks in unique notes, it makes up for by exemplifying the taste of a basic ale. It has the characteristics of a good German beer. The hops are there in the aroma and brace the malt flavor, ultimately defining the finish. The light golden body and thin white head contain more malt-hop interplay than you might expect from the beer’s appearance. The flavor is simple but satisfying and refreshing. This could be a dinner, hors d’ouvre or session beer. Or all three at once. Whatever your thing is, man.