Sam Adams takes on Heady Topper, Enjoy By IPA

When I talked to Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Company, two years ago, he made pretty clear that he didn't like standing still. He didn't want his company to stand still, either. Keep innovating, keep trying new things, or die. That was the idea.

In today's craft beer world, in which the best beers in the world are always the Hot New Thing instead of the Rock Solid Classic, that's the right approach to take. People demand new. They demand their breweries keep mixing things up.

Photo courtesy of masslive.com, by Michael Beswick

Koch and his mega Samuel Adams brand are going to be shaking things up soon. First, by releasing a huge canned double IPA inspired in part by Heady Topper, and more notably, by demanding that it only stay on shelves for a short period of time, akin to Stone's Enjoy By series but even more aggressive. They're going to mandate that after 35 days it gets pulled from shelves in order to ensure freshness.

That's a pretty bold move, especially for a brewer as big as Sam Adams. It could change how some beers are handled at retail.

First, the beer itself. Koch recently told BostInno, "When you look at some of the iconic big IPAs, like Pliny the Elder or Heady Topper from here in New England, part of what makes them so renowned is people drink 'em fresh ... They get 'em at the brewery. If you have those beers two to three months into their life, they're not the same."

This beer is going to be an unfiltered double IPA clocking in at 10% ABV and available only in 16oz cans.

In other words, very inspired by Heady Topper.

Dabbling in big, hoppy beers is a bit unusual for them. They've done IPAs for years, of course -- they had an IPA way back in the 1990s before almost anyone else, messed with DIPAs several years back with Third Voyage, and these days have a full line of them, including Rebel Rouser (not to mention their awesome single-hop pack from a few years back). So, despite the scorn they get, they can do hoppy, too.

But a Heady clone is new ground for them.

The REAL new ground will be their stringent shelving policies for this beer, though.

They plan to give it a 35-day shelf life. After that, it must be pulled from the shelves. Wholesalers are probably going to do some grumbling about that, but you know what? It's a great move. I've ranted about bottle dating before, and for good reason. You want to be drinking your IPAs as fresh as possible. When they linger on the shelves too long, they go downhill ... some of them pretty quickly.

So why not force freshness? It's done with other types of food and drinks. If we care about it enough for frickin' Little Debbie snacks to get yanked after a time, we should care about it with beer, too, to the point of taking an aggressive hand in getting older IPAs off the shelves.

Retailers might not like it, but I'm all for it.

Though Sam Adams no longer gets much respect among today's beer crowd, I'm generally up for trying anything they do. This one will be released only in select markets (and they haven't said which markets yet), so we'll see if I can get my hands on some.

Quick Sips: Samuel Adams New Albion Ale

I do love me some trips into beer history.

Before there was Samuel Adams or Sierra Nevada or Dogfish Head or anyone in craft beer, there was Jack McAuliffe’s New Albion brewery, the first craft brewery of the modern era. But in an era of bad canned lager made in dying regional breweries, America wasn’t ready.

New Albion opened in 1976 and closed its doors in 1982, a whisper in terms of business. Their legacy, however, endures. In some ways they were the Velvet Underground of beer. Not many people drank them, but everyone who did started their own brewery. They influenced countless others and helped introduce the idea that American beer can be hoppy, an approach that has all but come to define American craft beer.

Samuel Adams recreates New Albion's influential flagship with New Albion Ale, brewed with the original recipe provided by McAuliffe himself. Considering how far craft beer has come in the more than 30 years since New Albion folded, you’d expect this to be pretty tame. You’d be wrong. It’s a bright, hoppy, bitter-but-drinkable brew with an aroma that would not be out of place on today’s shelves. Have to admit, I was a little surprised - and impressed. It’s a little taste of history, sure, but if you don’t care about history then just look at it as a taste of something good. Because it is

Portions of this piece originally appeared in the Philadelphia Weekly and are repeated here with permission.

For Jim Koch and Sam Adams, variety is the spice of life

If you have one of the best selling and best known craft beers on the market, it would be easy to understand putting your time and resources into expanding its reach. When that beer is a pioneering brew like Boston Lager by SamuelAdams, it’s especially easy to understand.

Jim Koch, founder of Samuel Adams, doesn’t see it that way. For him, being safe is boring.

"The day I want to make the same beer every day is the day I retire,” Koch told me during Philly Beer Week. “It is as exciting today as it was in 1984 when we first started."

During the week-long celebration of all things suds in the City of Brotherly love, Koch bounced around to various tastings and tap takeovers and food pairing events, during which yet another array of new Samuel Adams beers were showcased. There was Honey Queen, a braggot that will soon be released as part of their Small Batch series, a barrel aged porter, and a load of others – not to mention creative pairings, such as pancakes made with their Blueberry Hill Lager. Even this year’s summer mix pack contains several new beers, including a really tasty rye witbier called Little White Rye brewed with orange peel, coriander, and sage.

The question is, why? When you have one of the most successful flagship beers in craft beer history (Boston Lager) and some of the most popular seasonals on the market, why the never-ending flow of new beers?

"A brewer always wants more beer. One of the things that continues to motivate me is that there are some really innovative styles of beer that no one has made yet. I want to be one of the brewers who makes them,” Koch said.

It might be easy to dismiss that as marketing speak if it wasn’t for the fact that Samuel Adams has done exactly that for years. Way back in the 1990s they blew the lid off what beer could be with Triple Bock, a barrel-aged brew that at the time was the strongest in the world and which was like nothing that had ever been done before. That sort of rule-breaking and innovation continued with beers like Millennium, a 20% ABV barrel-aged strong ale, Infinium, their ground-breaking champagne replacement, and Utopias, which is perhaps the most complex beer on the planet.

Meanwhile, in addition to constantly introducing new beers in their mix packs, their Barrel Room Collection introduces big, challenging beers in limited quantities, and their Small Batch Series has turned into a line that is constantly doing interesting things, such as double IPAs, gingerbread stouts, bocks with chocolate and chili peppers, and Americanized versions of the elusive Gose style of beer.

I had my first Samuel Adams in 1994, and over the years I’ve had over 90 different beers by them. Over ninety! And I’ve missed quite a few in recent years, brews that slipped past me before I had a chance to get them. Koch keeps variety whores like me in a constant state of “oh, here’s something new to try!” He likes it that way.

“I’ve been doing this 29 years. I don’t have anything to prove. I just want to enjoy my job,” Koch told me.

And pushing the boundaries as if they were still the fiery little upstart they were in 1984 is one way he does that.

Can’t say I’m inclined to argue with him.

(Photos taken from various other blogs)

The Philly Beer Top 50 - Part 2

Philly Beer Week is pretty much the biggest beer thing ever this side of the Great American Beer Festival when it comes to the not-shitty side of the Mississippi, so needless to say I'm stoked to be writing the 50-Beer Countdown To Philly Beer Week for the Philadelphia Weekly.

And hey, I care for you (not really), so I'm happy to divide it up into handy little five-beer lists like this. So here are five of the 50 beers available in Philly that you MUST drink. Part 2 of 10!

Victory Golden Monkey
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/drink/philly-beer-week/Victory-Golden-Monkey-PWs-50-Beer-Countdown-to-Philly-Beer-Week-Day-6-203062651.html

Flying Fish Exit 16
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/drink/philly-beer-week/Flying-Fish-Exit-16-PWs-50-Beer-Countdown-to-Philly-Beer-Week-Day-7-203063151.html

Samuel Adams New Albion Ale
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/drink/philly-beer-week/Samuel-Adams-New-Albion-Ale-PWs-50-Beer-Countdown-to-Philly-Beer-Week-Day-8-203063981.html

Tröegs Nugget Nectar
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/drink/philly-beer-week/Troegs-Nugget-Nectar-PWs-50-Beer-Countdown-to-Philly-Beer-Week-Day-9-203611731.html

Stone Brewing's Oaked Smoked Old Guardian
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/drink/philly-beer-week/Stone-Brewing-Old-Guardian-PWs-50-Beer-Countdown-to-Philly-Beer-Week-Day-10-203821411.html

From the Cellar: Samuel Adams Imperial White

From The Cellar posts are about aging beer just like you would wine, and this time around we've got a pretty interesting one: Samuel Adams Imperial White.

This is an odd one to cellar. Traditionally, witbiers are not good candidates for aging. You want to drink them cold and fresh in order to get the nice notes of orange peel and coriander. This Imperial White, however, is a high alcohol monster that Sam Adams allegedly brewed with aging in mind.

I should hope they had aging in mind with this one, because frankly, when fresh this beer is a mess. It's big, hot, malty yet spiced up, and trying to do too many things at once. It doesn't know what it wants to be -- it's neither refreshing like a great witbier nor hearty and satisfying like a big alcohol brew -- and it's not something I'd recommend.

But what does some time do to it?

The bottle I opened was about two years old, stored in a covered mile crate in the corner of a bedroom. It remained at about 65 - 70 degrees the whole time and saw no light.

The beer pours a deeply hazy orange, with a light, fizzy head that dissipates pretty quickly. There is a surprising amount of orange in the aroma, shockingly up front despite the beer's age and having come directly from the fridge. (Lower temperatures inhibit aroma, which is why the "cold, cold, cold!" push of Bud, Miller and Coors is so idiotic; most of what we perceive as taste, after all, is actually what we're smelling.) As Imperial White warms to room temperature, however, it begins to develop an aroma note that is almost akin to window cleaner. Oof. This beer wants to consumed slightly on the cooler side -- which makes sense, since wheats tend to be preferred at lower temperatures.

Thankfully, it tastes pretty damn good. After two years, plenty of orange and some coriander remain in this uber-powered witbier. The malts have developed into a more complicated mix of crisp wheat and heady sweetness. Whereas fresh this beer was a mess that didn't quite know what it wants to be, with some time under its belt this is a surprisingly interesting beer. There is a note on the back end that is just this far into "funny," but for the most part the wheat and spice have evolved into a more complex brew than when first purchased.

The alcohol has really mellowed after all this time, too. This beer comes in at 10.3% ABV, which is HUGE for a wheat beer/witbier, yet after two years you'd never know it was as potent as it is. The beer drinks smooth. Not quite refreshingly smooth, but smooth. Which isn't to say this beer drinks easy. It doesn't. There is a lot going on here, and halfway through the glass you begin to get some fatigue. But overall, this beer is FAR better after being laid down for two years than it was fresh. And just to back that up, I had quite a few bottles on hand and tried them at roughly six-month intervals. I can say unequivocally that this beer gets better over time.

If I have another bottle on hand -- I don't recall offhand if I do -- I'll be trying it at three years to see how it is.

BEER: Samuel Adams Imperial White
VINTAGE: 2010 (estimated; Boston Beer Co., please date your Imperial series)
TIME AGED: About 2 years
NOTES: Would probably pair very well with a meal

VERDICT: Put this beer away for a while and enjoy, this one gets better with age!

If you like Blue Moon you may also like...

For many people, beers like Blue Moon are their introduction to craft beer. Beer snobs will gnash their teeth and point out that Blue Moon is not a real craft beer (which is true, it's actually made by Coors), but I say, so what? The important thing is that these folks have opened up to beers with more flavor than Coors Light or Bud Light or whatever. They obviously realize beer can taste like more than carbonated malt, and they like that idea. That's great! So what do you try next if you've had and enjoyed Blue Moon?

It's not as easy as "have some Arrogant Bastard!" You may think you're an awesome craft beer dude who knows the best beers there are, but chances are your friend/relative/whoever will hate the intense new craft beer you're trying to introduce them to. As I've argued before, most people are bad at making recommendations. If Blue Moon is someone's gateway beer, you can lead them further into excellent craft beer with some well-chosen recommendations. Here are my suggestions (tailored towards beers available in the Northeast):

• Allagash White - Same basic style as Blue Moon (Belgian-style witbier), but not as sweet, with a rich bready banana aroma. Also one of the best witbiers out there. This is a top-shelf beer. You can serve it with orange like Blue Moon, but I wouldn't recommend it.
• Harpoon UFO Raspberry Hefeweizen - Personally I'm not a huge fan (heck, I've brewed better), but someone who likes Blue Moon may enjoy this fruit-fueled hefe, a style nicely comparable with witbiers. It's a pleasant drinking beer with nice fruit overtones.
• Sierra Nevada Kellerweis - A light-but-tasty hefe that only has a mild yeasty taste; quite refreshing. Can be served with orange, if you're into that, but drinks nicely on its own. Great bridge from Blue Moon to better craft beers. This is an amazing early summer beer.
• Samuel Adams Blackberry Witbier - A fruity witbier. The blackberries are front and center; it drinks dry for the style, though (which is to say, it's "crisp"). Not among their best, but it may be appropriate for the taste of someone who enjoys Blue Moon, which is fruitier than you'd expect for the style. (This can also be swapped out for Sam Adams' Coastal Wheat, a pretty basic but nice drinking wheat beer).
• Southhampton Double White - A knock-you-on-your-ass beer compared to Blue Moon, this is a higher alcohol than usual witbier with lots of flavor (6.7% ABV compared to Blue Moon's 5.4%). It might be too "heavy" for someone who swears by Blue Moon, but it's worth trying if they appear ready to plunge into bigger bears. Similar aroma, less citrus-sweetness, but in the same general style ballpark.
• Magic Hat #9 - I'm also not a fan of this one, but Blue Moon fans may be. It's an apricot-centric pale ale that a lot of people really enjoy, especially during the warmer weather. It's widely enjoyed by beer people everywhere. This is worth trying if Blue Moon introduced you to craft beer. (As an alternate, swap in Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat.)

Most of these will win you no major beer snob awards, but who the hell cares? The most important thing is that at least one or two will hit the spot for folks who got introduced to better beer via Blue Moon.

Enjoy.

Visit my personal website or check out my independent editorial services at Your Awesome Editor.  

Quick Sips: Samuel Adams Third Voyage Double IPA

Discounting the Longshot entries, which aren't technically beer recipes by Samuel Adams, this big beer is their first foray into double IPA territory, and comes courtesy of their new small batch series.

The aroma is a heady swirl of pine forest and canned peaches. Other double IPAs are more pungent, but for their first effort Sam Adams does it nice. So a pour and a taste? Strong bitterness. Not harsh, but bitter enough to smash through any other tastes lingering in your mouth. This one is a palate cleaner -- which is exactly what you want from a DIPA.

That said, the 8% alcohol by volume is not well masked. This is a strong beer and you can taste it. Even at refrigerator temps some alcohol heat cuts through, which is unusual for modern American craft brews. As it warms, the alcohol becomes even more prominent. Proceed with caution.

Overall this is a good beer, not a top tier double IPA but quite respectable and likely to impress anyone who is a Sam Adams aficionado.

Quick Sips: Samuel Adams the Vixen, Chocolate Chili Bock

I absolutely love this beer. Too bad it was a small batch that may or may not be available in the future. Samuel Adams, the biggest craft brewery in the United States and one of the pioneers of the American craft beer movement, recently launched their Small Batch Series of limited run beers. Of the four initial beers in this series, this one is the most offbeat and, in my opinion, the best.

And yes, you read the name right. This is a chocolate chili bock made with chilies, cocoa nibs, and cinnamon.

You might see "cinnamon" and "chili peppers" and think this beer will be a spicy mess, but think again. Both are here only just enough to counter the gooey sweetness of the chocolate. Stick your nose in the glass -- a wine glass is good for this beer -- and you'll think it's dessert. The spicy additions, however, blend nicely with the chocolate and counter the sweetness.

What impresses me is how well balanced the various elements are. The cocoa/chocolate is perfectly complemented by the chili and cinnamon. None of the three take over, which is, in my opinion, what makes it so good. Nothing here screams "CHOCOLATE BEER!" or "CHILI BEER!" Nothing extreme, just a good blend of flavors. I like a great chocolate beer (Southern Tier's Choklat, for example) and enjoy a nice chili/pepper beer (I've recently enjoyed Left Hand's Pepper Porter and Stone's outstanding 11.11.11), but it's the fine balance between the two that makes this one work.

Highly recommended. If you see it on the shelves, give it a try.

Samuel Adams unfairly scorned by beer snobs

Become immersed enough in beer geek culture and you eventually reach a layer of people who don't just look down on Bud Light Lime, they look down upon American craft beer pioneer Samuel Adams, scorning it for being a mass-produced, too-popular line of beers. The beer is bland and safe and populist, they say. It's boring and watered down and not adventurous, they say. After all, everyone can get Samuel Adams and almost anyone can like it. It's just mass-produced beer masquerading as crafted, they say. And I suppose they have something of a point ...

But you know what?

Every time I have Samuel Adams I'm reminded why I came to like them in the first place. (For the record, when I first got into craft beer too many years ago to mention, it was Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn, and Yuengling that paved the way.) It's true they almost never make the best beer in their chosen style, or even rank supremely high in each style they brew. Their Boston Lager remains the definitive American lager in part because very few American brewers do lagers these days, sure, but little of what they do inspires hardcore beer geeks to say, "This is frickin' outstanding!"

They do "solid" beers, rarely "extreme," and for many beers snobs "solid" isn't good enough. These days, people want BIG.

But so what if they don't knock it out of the park with every beer? Even if we set aside the fact that Jim Koch and the Boston Beer Company have been pioneering so-called "extreme beers" for many years, from 1994's Triple Bock to their rare and sought after Millennium to the highly expensive Utopias (one of the strongest real fermented beers in the world) to the ground-breaking brew experiment of Infinium (which may have failed in taste but which broke big new ground in the brewing process), the fact is that Samuel Adams produces a slew of styles each year, and they're almost always decent examples of the beer style in question. Not the best, maybe. Sometimes not even great. But rarely (with the exception of the unfortunate fruit lambic that shall remain unnamed) ever approaching outright bad, and often approaching pretty damn good. Their Black Lager, Holiday Porter, Noble Pils, Scotch Ale, Octoberfest and others are nice (and sometimes awesome) examples of each style.

And they continue to experiment with higher end brews, too. Their Barrel Room Collection is made up of big beers blended with a special, unreleased beer they call Kosmik Mother Funk. You can see great photos of their barrel room here, taken by fellow beer geek Jason Jammallo. They do an Imperial series that can be hit-or-miss, but hits well when it does hit. They even do a number of one-time, tap-only beers. For as long as they've been around they keep trying new things. They keep experimenting. They keep trying to broaden what they do.

As other bloggers point out, Samuel Adams no longer has to do stuff like this. They're the largest of the craft brewers. They're well known. Recognizable. A really big frickin' fish in the small pond of craft beer. They don't need to keep pushing themselves. But they do.

And this isn't even getting into how they helped bail out many microbrewers during the 2008 hop shortage, the way their annual Longshot contest supports homebrewing (did you know every Samuel Adams employee is given a homebrew kit upon employment?), or how they offer loans to startup breweries.

These guys are awesome.

I write this after having ignored their new Rustic Saison and East-West Kolsch all summer long. Finally broke down and got the last summer variety pack in my shop, though, because after some 17 years of drinking Samuel Adams beer I didn't want to let these two slip past without at least giving them a shot.

And they were good. The saison was bright and a bit funky (but not much) and had some nice spice. It was a good saison. I've had better, but dammit, it's a good introduction to the style for someone new to saisons, and for old vets it's still a good, refreshing beer. Same with the Kolsch. Clean, crisp, tasty. The best? No. But who cares? Excellent way to show beer drinkers, "This is the Kolsch style of beer" and make sure it's available to millions.

That's freakin' great. And it's just one of many reasons for beer snobs to stop being pricks about Samuel Adams.

Visit my personal website or check out my independent editorial services at Your Awesome Editor.  

Deconstructing hops

So when I recently posted about hops, I had that limited release Samuel Adams 12-pack in hand but had not yet indulged. Now that I have, let's explore just how these six "different" beers really are different. After all, they're the same beer with the same recipe and the same malt, yeast and water. How big a difference could a single hop make?

A big one. Check it out, listed by the hop, with an eye towards how they might be used in brewing your own beer:

Ahtanum - Cleansing floral pine in the aroma, huge fluffy head on the pour. The bitterness is a lot less than I expected from the aroma, though. Taste is almost a bit medicinal. Ugh. Not appealing in taste, yet very nice smell. I could see using this hop as an aroma hop in a homebrew, but I wouldn't touch this for bittering or mid-boil hop additions.

East Kent Goldings - Very famous hop among beer geeks/historians. This is a traditional mild English hop. Kind of earthy. Only mildly bitter and the aroma is musty and unimpressive. In a single-hop beer it's rather boring, really, but it is an old standard as a bittering hop. Easy to see it used for that purpose.

Hallertau Mittelfrueh - A well known and often used German hop. Smells of pine and something pleasant I can't quite place. Apricot? Taste is mildly bitter but with a touch more fruit than East Kent Goldings. Still mild fruit, though not a lot. This would be a nice bittering hop or 30-minute hop.

Simcoe - Oh wow. I love this hop. VERY bitter, very piney with a touch of harsh citrus. It's a popular one in big American IPAs these days. Weyerbacher, a great brewer out of PA, does a Double Simcoe IPA that is outstanding. It translates well in the Samuel Adams version, too. Up front, aggressive, hoppy, this version of Latitude 48 is better than the regular version!

Zeus - Nice citrus aroma, sharply bitter, tastes of pine. Almost a little harsh, but not in an off-putting way. I could see this being used in almost any role in a beer -- if used in moderation and in balance with others.

Fully-Hopped Latitude 48 - Eh. It's not bad. Mild, mild pine aroma. No citrus. Taste is smooth but underwhelming. Nicely bitter, perfectly balanced. In a way that's why it's forgettable. It leaves absolutely no impression on you -- yet I can't help but think it will stand the test of time BECAUSE of that. No trends. No bold taste. Just a tasteful blend of hops grown at the 48th latitude. I'd prefer something bolder and more aggressive, but as an example of a traditional IPA this is a fairly capable (and very approachable) beer.

The bottom line here is pretty easy to get to: hops matter. A lot. They can change a beer entirely. So next time you see a beer boasting it uses This Hop or That Hop, pay attention. It really does mean big differences in how it tastes.

The Wonderful World of Hops

If you enjoy beer, you know the word “hops.” And as you’ll discover a little further down in this column, right now your better liquor stores are offering a rare chance to get a tasty education in hops.

Along with water, malted barley, and yeast, hops are one of the four primary ingredients in beer. They are a vine-like plant closely related to the hemp plant. Hops, however, have no properties that will induce “altered states.” They’re in beer solely for taste.

Hops provide bitterness to counteract the heavy sweetness of the malted barley used to make beer. Without them, beer would be a sickly sweet and syrupy. They also have some preservative properties. The best known story showcasing this is the origin of the popular India Pale Ale, or IPA, style of beer. As the story goes, this beer was developed with a more robust dose of hops in order to ensure the beer kept during the long voyage to India. (There is some dispute among beer historians about this tale.)

Not all hops are created alike. Some impart a mild bitterness. Others such as those used in big American IPAs give citrus aromas or pine-like scents. Others are “grassy.” Brewers routinely blend hops to get the desired effect, so in any given beer you may be tasting a blend of two, three, four or more different hop strains.

Want to taste the difference? Right now, Samuel Adams is offering a limited edition 12-pack that serves as a hops lesson in a box. Their Latitude 48 IPA Deconstructed pack takes their Latitude 48 IPA, which is made with a blend of five hops that grow along the 48th latitude line, and breaks it down into a series of single-hop versions of the same beer. In each 12-pack you get two bottles of the IPA, then two bottles each of versions that use the same water, yeast and malted barley, but just one of the five hops used in the beer – Hallertau Mittelfrueh (a German hop), the famous English hop East Kent Goldings, and three great American hops grown in Washington state, Ahtanum, Simcoe, and Zeus. That means you get six different IPAs in the box, five of the six showcasing the unique taste of an individual hop.

The idea isn’t entirely new. For example, Mikkeller, a Danish brewer, has a single-hop line, but it’s far out of the price range of the average beer lover.

So for about $14 you can get a great education in hops, all while enjoying some Samuel Adams. Better grab it fast, though. This is a limited release and isn’t likely to last.

Oh yeah, and maybe in a future post I’ll discuss why “triple-hopped” is meaningless bullshit.