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The Syncretism of Sam Adams

January 9, 2015 · by Oliver Gray

When Christian missionaries first arrived in Norse villages, they faced a pantheon of fierce pagan deities; a mythology so ingrained in ancient Scandinavian spirituality that questioning it might incur the wrath of Thor. But the missionaries would not be swayed from their righteous path, and they were smart and patient. They dissected what they could of the runish lore, and began to see similarities that they might exploit to sow the seeds of their (comparatively new) gospels.

“So your god, Baldr? The perfect son of your all-father god, who was betrayed and killed but will rise again at the end of days? He’s a lot like our Jesus. Funny coincidence, no? I can read this Bible to you if you want to know more.”

When Jim Koch first walked into the twinkling lights of the Boston bar scene in 1984, he faced a stubborn generation of beer drinkers; consumers so conditioned to drink American pale lager that few knew there were other options, and even fewer dared to try them. But Koch had a dream born of fermentation, and he was smart and patient. He saw in the yellow swirl of carbonated buzz the potential for more; gustatorily and economically.

“So this beer? Miller Lite? Crisp, refreshing, easy to drink, and not so hard on your wallet? It’s a lot like my beer. I’ll leave this bottle of Boston Lager here if you want to know more.”

There has been a lot of buzz about Jim Koch and his company, Boston Beer, over the past week. Lots of talk about his behavior in a certain bar, how “the industry” views Sam Adams as a whole, and what that means for the future (and history) of the subculture. Some beer enthusiasts rushed to defend the company who despite constantly outgrowing its clothes, somehow still gets brought back under the fold of “craft” by a very accomodating Brewer’s Association. Others turned on the proven veteran, claiming Koch was just suffering from an acute case of “get off my lawn syndrome” in the face of a rapidly expanding and youthwardly trending American beer landscape.

Those who wrote about him (regardless of how they felt about Koch himself [or his beer]) seemed to agree unanimously that whatever he says or does now doesn’t change the fact that without him, we wouldn’t be drowning in this dry-hopped utopia that is the “craft beer revolution.”

But what did Koch really do? Andy Crouch’s piece in Boston Magazine covers the specific details as they relate to the beer business very well, so I won’t rehash them here. But other brewing prophets like Maytag, Papazian, McAullife, and Grossman all recorded their malten glory onto the annals of beerish history around the same time, so why does Koch stand out? Is it the large-scale success of Boston Beer, the unquestionable ubiquity, the “you can make dreams happen” narrative that makes him into such a figure of beer legend?

Maybe.

But I don’t think that’s all of it. Koch wasn’t just lucky or a master of timing. He tapped into something older and deeper than practiced corporate marketing, something cultural influencers have used for centuries to deftly mold the streams of human history.

Koch saw a blip on the social radar, the potential to inject a new idea, a new movement, and using all his business savvy, capitalized. Sure, he was a brewer and enthusiast which helped him position the product, but he was also a Capitalistic opportunist with a keen eye for markets. He looked and saw a post-Vietnam realignment, the decadence of the party culture of the 80s, a noticeable paradigm shift in America’s attitude towards hedonism. In the changing behavior and economics, he saw the consumer’s desire for new options, but knew he’d have to take it smooth and slow.

As my friend Douglas pointed out, Vienna Lager isn’t exactly a cutting edge beer, and for at least 100 years before Koch concocted his fabled kitchen-batch, the Germans had been perfecting the style over in the Rhineland. But I think Koch knew that. He dare not introduce something so wild as a pale ale; it was much too bitter for the average American consumer and Sierra Nevada had already established roots in that market. He dare not try any reigning English styles, for the American presumption that all English beer was flat and warm still echoed across polished hardwood bars.

No, he needed a beer that was a Jesus to the Norse Baldr; similar enough that a drinker would understand it and associate positive things with it, but different enough to stand alone, and in some ways, be superior to the original. He needed a tool for conversion. Eventually, like a syncromesh between two whirring gears, he used Boston Beer to bridge the gap between macro and micro, one restaurant tapline at a time.

To me, that is what Jim Koch did. Reintroduced the truth of beer to the unenlightened; those poor souls who suffered in the pale-dark under a cruel regime of relatively choiceless banality. He showed them they had other choices, could believe in other things that were potentially more in line with their baser instincts. It has nothing to do with his beer now and everything to do with his beer then. It’s less about the quality of Sam Adams in comparison to the contemporary craft brewery, and more about the legacy of Boston Lager.

Everyone claiming his beers are “middle of the road” might consider that perhaps they’re middle of the road by design, to appeal to those drinkers who weren’t or aren’t ready to give up their religion of libation in favor of some modern cult of flavor. The Norse didn’t ever fully adopt Christianity, but they did eventually use parts of it; the parts they liked, that fit in with their world view, that made their daily lives a little easier. A BMC drinker who starts drinking Sam Adams is, I think all those in beer now will agree, a step in the right direction.

All other arguments of style and quality aside, why wouldn’t Koch be upset with the situation at Row 34? Imagine how the Pope might feel in an LDS church when someone begins to explain Joseph Smith’s discovery of the golden plates; to hear relative newcomers to your world announce in palpably arrogant tones that the way things have always been done, the way history recorded them and recognizes them, the way you’ve built your entire life, is wrong. Then imagine everyone in the room (a gaggle of folks who used to fully support you) agrees with the seeming blasphemy. It’s soul-shattering stuff to have your beliefs publicly questioned, and I’m sure Koch felt more hurt than angry, more confused than cantankerous.

However you feel about Boston Beer (full disclaimer: I quite enjoy Noble Pils but don’t drink much other Sam Adams) or Koch himself, you have to respect that without him, the palate of the average drinker would not have (so quickly) turned down the road we’re all now hurtling down with reckless abandon. Boston Lager ended up in every Applebee’s in the continental because Koch is a shrewd business man, but also because a whole metric-crap ton of American beer drinkers bought (and continue to buy) the stuff. The proof is in the growth and sales, whether your personal tastes lie on the positive or negative side of the beers coming out of Jamaica Plain.

Boston Beer’s stylistically timid foray in the trendy IPA market (and I mean “timid” in a hop profile sense not an economic one, given that Rebel is selling like hot cakes on a cold day) echoes the syncretistic philosophy that made him a billionaire: you win-over Bud Light drinkers with something similar to Bud Light, not a stinging hopstorm slinging double digit ABV. Koch isn’t trying to blow the collective minds of established beer enthusiasts (which seems to be the modern trend), he’s trying to bring something wonderful to the ones who haven’t yet seen the light, raise the average quality of beer in the entire country.

But just because he’s not directly vying for your dollar, doesn’t mean he’s not entitled to your respect.

Would someone else have come along eventually and done the same thing? Maybe. Probably. Definitely. But who cares about that now? Our history says Koch was integral in bringing better beer to the masses. That alone is worth a raise of the glass, a nod of the head, and a sincere salute to the legacy of Sam Adams.

(Note: I realize comparing Koch to the Pope is outlandish and possibly offensive. I just liked the analogy and ran with it. Please don’t take it too seriously.)

Five Years, Five Beers

October 24, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

Today, in all its falling leafy glory, marks the fifth anniversary of this blog. It’s hard to believe that 1825 days have waxed and waned since I first plugged “Literature and Libation” into WordPress, thinking I was very clever for such thematically appropriate alliteration.

Nostalgia is equal parts funny and sad. I remember my first stabs at beer writing; terrible reviews of Bud Light Platinum and Newcastle Founders Ale written mainly at the urging of my sister. I’m not sure if she actually believed in my ability or just wanted something to break the boredom of her workday, but I have to indirectly thank her for setting me down this wet and wild hopped road.

My timing in starting the blog coincided (perhaps serendipitously) with a change in my life, a time when I started to realize I was no longer that “college kid,” that my view and opinions were changing, moving, realigning with my more adult understanding of the world. It also just so happened to line up – like the planets slipping silently into perfect linear arrangement – with the period I started drinking better beer.

I’ve tried many, many beers in these five years; probably more than I had in the five previous to these, combined. At the behest of my friendly neighborhood brewing wizards this blog forced me out of the quiet simplicity of my Shire, taking me on adventures I’d never expected, showing me a world full of hoppy wonder and malty marvel. But in all those beers I sampled and sipped, I always returned to a some staples, stalwarts, those faithful, consistent few. These beers are more than my comfort falls backs, more than the fermented pajamas I slip into after a long and arduous day, they were my training wheels, my guides, my glass-clad sherpas up the mountains of good beer.

So on this anniversary, I salute them. And their brewers. And all the staff that helped bring them to me, and me to this world I love so much.

1. Dogfish Head 60 Minutes IPA

First came Sam’s flagship, the first “craft” beer I can remember my parents ever having in stock. My first reactions to IPA flirted dangerously close to “bitter beer face” but as my taste buds shed their nascent skin, I grew to appreciate how much was going on in a bottle of 60, and how easily accessible (if a tad pricey) such a different beer had become. I always come back to 60 minute as a reference point, some grounding, a reminder of where my taste for hops came form, and where beer was five, six, or seven years ago. When I first started this blog, I had no idea why it was even called 60 minute, assuming it was named such because it would take someone an hour just to finish one bottle.

2. Flying Dog Doggie Style (now Pale Ale)

A part of my beer-drinking self always latched itself to no-frills pale ales, either out of irrational loyalty to what my father taught me to love, or out of safety, comfort, the beauty of repeatable simplicity. Whatever fueled it, it manifested in Flying Dogs award winning pale; there’s nothing particularly wild about it, but there it is, balanced, refreshing, happy to be the middle child between weird exotic yeasts and tired pale lagers. From this safe base of pale malt I felt confident to branch out into pretty much any style: I always had a big soft pint of pale to fall back into if things got a little too freaky and yeasty.

3. Heavy Seas Loose Cannon

The pirate in me gives me orders, his drunken swaggering the impetus for a lot of my rambling of the same. It’s no surprise I took to Heavy Seas; they’re local, they’re good, they’re unabashedly pirate themed. While I enjoy quite a few of their beers, Loose Cannon sidled up to me early, mug of grog in hand, sly whispers of, “you like 60 minute? Well you’ll love me.”

And I did. And do. And probably always will. It’s my quintessential Maryland beer, and that’s saying a lot (sorry Natty Boh).

4. Sam Adams Boston Lager

A cliche? Perhaps. A mistake? Never. All recent commercials aside, Sam Adams Boston Lager is a pretty fantastic gateway beer. It has everything you could want without being offensive about it. There’s also something to respect about the market positioning Sam Adams set the rest of the industry up for, and sometimes I buy their beer simply out of beer guy respect. Are there better options? Sometimes. But you’ll almost never have a friend turn down a Boston Lager, even if their normal drinking typically falls much much further in BMC territory.

5. Yuengling Lager

I just can’t quit the old girl from Pottsville. I’ve tried. Oh, how I’ve tried. In my early years of being a mindless craft crusaders, I swore off “junk” beer like Yuengling, feigning some kind of pretentious elitism that somehow, despite everything Yuengling had done for me, made me better than the beer. Well I’m not. I’m not better than any beer. The pedigree behind even the lowest rated and much maligned beers still outweighs mine a thousand fold. I’m especially not better than the good ole girl from Pottsville.

So to celebrate my perfuntory triumph of managing not to burn out too badly or quit in a huff of public, Twitter glory, I’m not going to reach into the back of the fridge for some rare beer. I’m not going to chuck harpoons looking for whales. I’m definitely not going to forget where I came from, how I got here, and which beers were integral to keeping me on track.

Here’s to the standbys, the go-tos, to old friends. But more importantly, here’s to all you readers and all your support. If I had the time and money to buy you all a beer, I most certainly would.

Here’s to beer. Here’s to writing. Here’s to five more years.

Beer Review: Sam Adams Thirteenth Hour

November 6, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I am loathe to set my alarm. Not just because I’m a notoriously horrible person in the morning, but because it feels so mechanical, such an affront the natural cycles of the sun and my sleep. I’d honestly rather give a speech to a thousand strangers than wake up to a dissonant sound that rips me from the blissful silence of slumber.

But I punch the pre-dawn hours into my phone anyway, knowing that part of my existence right now is tied to getting to certain buildings at certain times, smiling through the fog of fatigue, mimicking professionalism as accurately as possible to fit in with the other mimes. Time is structure, structure is order, and order is peace. Or so I’ve been told.

My father used to tell me about his watch. It was shiny and expensive, probably of Swiss make; his lifeline to the corporate world, keeping him on-time and in-check no matter what country he landed in. He never talked of it fondly though. When it entered conversation, it was rusted with a bit of disdain, like he hadn’t owned the watch, but vice versa.

He told me of how one day in his late 20s, sitting on a train in Germany, he had realized he’d looked down at his watch six times in one minute. He undid the latch, stuck it in his bag, and never put it back on. In the 27 years I knew him, I never saw a watch on his wrist. He was rarely concerned with being late or being early. I think he knew how he’d grown obsessed with time – the whens, tick by tick, becoming more important than the whos and the whats – and decided that wasn’t a very fun way to live.

I’m not quite at that point, but with many stresses with just as many deadlines, I often feel my heart syncing up with the second hand. I feel guilty when I do something that isn’t productive. I am unable to relax sometimes, knowing that work needs to be done, and that time keeps going whether I do it or not.

But last Saturday night, I sat in the chilly Philadelphia air with one of the best friends I have in the world, sipping sweet stouty raisin and fig from a stemless glass, puffing creamy cherry and red wine from a fat cigar. We celebrated love, life, and love of life, while simultaneously mourning the unfairness of time.

Daylight saving crept in on us as we reclined on that stoop. The clocks lurched across the country in one disharmonious chronological displacement as humans tried their best to control Sol. Something dislodged, came free, from the cogs of our infernal machine.

An hour that didn’t exist, that floated in between the other hours like a ghostly, forgotten thing. A lost hour. A gained hour. An hour where we could just drink, talk, be, the rest of responsibility be damned.

It was the thirteenth hour. And it was so, so good.

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes.” -Mark Z. Danielewski

Beerology: Who are you, Brew?

June 6, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

From an outside perspective, brewing beer may seem pretty simple. Heat water, mash malt, boil wort, add hops, cool, pitch, wait, bottle. And to some extent that’s true. As the former owner of Anchor Brewing, Frederick Louis “Fritz” Maytag, said, “We brewers don’t make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.”

Our job is to make the wort. The microscopic chomping of the yeast does all the hard work. But within the simple verb and direct object of “make the wort” is a very large field of scientific study with lots of measurements and experiments and graduated cylinders containing many different colored liquids covering the full range of the SRM beer color spectrum.

My new series, Beerology, will ask questions about craft beer and then attempt to answer them using as much science as a guy who has an undergraduate degree in English can muster. I will attempt to be as academically rigorous as possible, but I apologize now to all the real scientists; I’m still working towards my honorary degrees in Hoplogy, Maltography, and Yeastometrics.

I’m sure a lot of these questions could be answered with some creative Google-voodoo, but that’s not the point. Science! And stuff!

Oliver Gray, Beerologist

The Question: If a bottle somehow lost its label and all other defining marks, could the beer inside be correctly identified?

The Beer Babe asked this question a few weeks ago, and it got me wondering. How can we really identify beer? More importantly, what is the level of consistency between batches of the same beer? Maintaining the same exact recipe and correctly controlling all of the variables is one of the biggest challenges for homebrewers, especially those trying to continually reproduce the same beer over and over again.

While I would have loved to have analyzed the beer under an electron microscope and reported my findings about sugar length and alpha/beta amylase activity, I’m just a normal guy who lives in the suburbs. My “lab” is a tool closet in my basement. I had to get creative with how to test the consistency of these beers.

I chose to compare the very basics – appearance, smell, and taste – and then add in two other markers – pH and specific gravity – of three different batches of three different commercially available beers: Sam Adams Boston Lager, Goose Island Honker’s Ale, and Harpoon IPA.

The Experiment: After excavating the deep, forgotten coolers and shelves of several nearby beer stores, I managed to find SA Boston Lager from two different production batches, as evidenced by the “Enjoy Before” dates:

I used two six-packs from the same group (to measure consistency within the same batch) and one from a different group (to measure consistency between different batches). We’ll call them “Control Group March” and “Control Group July” because that sounds really professional and sciencey. I know this isn’t the greatest sample size, but given the blog-budget (which is currently zero dollars), this was the best I could do.

Before I started, to eliminate any extra variables, I let all the beer warm to room temperature and then go (nearly) flat. I know, I’m so sorry. I feel dirty. I hope the beer gods can forgive me one day, for I only did what I did in the name of progress!

I did the crude taste test first. Each glass of Boston Lager tasted pretty much the same, except the version from Control Group March had a bit of a stale, old-french-fries twinge, which is to be expect from a lager that is nearly 4 months old. They all smelled roughly the same, except again, the beer from the older batch had a little more “been in your uncle’s basement too long” mustiness compared to the fresher stuff.

At a glance, they all appeared exactly the same, too. Same head retention, same color. The magic of Photoshop validates my eyesight too: all three glasses had the same approximate/average hex color (which is #863903 for anyone who wants to make a very true-to-life Sam Adams birthday collage for Jim Koch or something.)

Because I’m bad at math, I poured the third one first. That’s why it has less of a head.

So far so good; you could in theory identify this beer with nothing more than your tongue, nose, and eyes. But let’s swim deeper into the sea of science.

I pulled out my fancy pH meter and began taking measurements:

There was a pretty wide variance in the level of pH from beer to beer in Control Group March. This surprised me, as I excepted, given the similarity in taste, that the pH would be nearly identical. The lowest measurement I took was 4.18, and the highest was 4.41. The average for the three groups was 4.3, 4.2, and 4.21; close enough to say that Boston Lager has a pretty stable final pH of something like 4.25.

As a point of reference, water is ~7, Coca-cola is ~3, and the inside of a normal human mouth is ~5.5-6.5. All of the measurements were still within the normal, healthy range of a lager (which can be anywhere from 3.8-4.5 depending on which chemist you ask or website you read) so it may just be that time in a bottle and location in the batch at bottling can cause fluctuations in the acidity of the final beer. The pH differences between the two July control groups were negligible.

I also tested the specific gravity, using my trusty old, fragile-as-hell hydrometer. If anyone wants to contribute to the “Oliver needs a refractometer and a high powered laser for reasons he won’t explain” fund, please shoot me an email.

The results from the specific gravity tests were as consistent as an old, well cared for Toyota. I won’t even bore you with an analysis of the results. Let’s just say that if there were any differences, they were too minor for the gentle bobbing of a stick of glass in a tube of beer to measure.

The full spreadsheet of my test data can be found here.

The Conclusion: Commercially available craft beer is pretty damn consistent within batches and between batches, but age may cause some changes or instability. As long as you had a fresh example to compare against, you could identify a non-labeled, large-scale production beer based on the taste, smell, color, pH, and specific gravity alone. You wouldn’t even need any fancy sugar or “beer-DNA” analysis. I’m sure they’d corroborate my super scientific findings, though.

This probably only applies to beer that has been filtered and carefully controlled during brewing, meaning you’d have to throw all of this out the window when trying to identify a bottle conditioned or homebrewed beer.

Want more beer science, beertography, and irreverant mumblings? Follow me on Twitter! @OliverJGray

Beer Review: Sam Adam Blueberry Hill Lager

April 12, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

“Have I ever told you about Blueberry Hill?”

Edgar sat as Edgar liked to sit, in the almond slices of afternoon that came through his window like a star forced through the slats of a wooden park bench. The light caught him, processed him, and charged him. The verdict: guilty of age. It glanced off his head, peeked through his little white hairs, those few near-translucent hangers-on, stubborn and unwilling to finally just give up, poking up from his saggy head-skin like defiant sign-waving protesters.

His eyes fixed on the sterile room’s only window, he went on, his voice an anachronistic skip like the hand of a record player stuck in the same groove, repeating the same sounds, desperately needing to be reset.

“Sheila always reminds me of the hill. She comes to my house to get me, loitering at the end of my drive. From my front door she looks like a tiny flower dancing on the wind. My dedicated daffodil.”

Despite the medication and the careful care from his well-trained and well-meaning attendants, earthquakes still raged through his nerves, the epicenter his cracked and faulted brain. As his hands involuntarily rattled against the wheels of his chair, his eyes remained still but squinted, shielding themselves from the barrage of rays.

“She sure is something. Those sun dresses she wears…” he closed his eyes, savoring the memory, chocolate on the tongue of his mind, “…the wind catches the fabric and her hair and blows them all around, and she giggles. She likes to wrap as much of her hand around mine as she can, and then we walk towards the hill, just the two of us in love, not a care in the world. Yes sir, she sure is something.”

A cloud passed between man and sun and the stream of light flickered like a memory captured on film, replayed so many times that the vivid colors of youth faded to grainy black and white. The cloud lingered a moment longer and the room showed itself true: not haven or refuge or sanctuary, but a grey and gruesome headstone. It was not here that he lived, anyway. Edgar resided in a Massachusetts that no longer existed, a home remade perfect and pristine by those few fleeting snapshots that still remained intact. It was a place of another time, one he could always, and never, return to.

“You know why they call it blueberry hill? ” A few-toothed smile climbed up onto his face. “The blueberries bushes! Dozens of them, randomly growing on the side of the hill. In summer, they’re packed with so many of those juicy little things. They look so nice, sometimes I feel bad about eating them and ruining the perfect scene. Everyone always says that wild blueberries are too sour to eat but, oh, not these. These are perfect. Just like my Sheila.”

Leaning forward in his chair, trying not to let the wheels slip out of his achy grasp, straining against the ichor in his bones, Edgar longed to see a little further out the window.

“That hill, let me tell you, it isn’t just a hill. That place is love incarnate. I stole my first kiss there, a few years back, but Sheila didn’t mind. I was lying next to her, laughing that we forgot a blanket again, and as she smiled, staring up at all that blue and white, I rolled over and kissed her cheek. She didn’t pull away, didn’t laugh, just turned and looked at me with those eyes and I knew. That grass and those bushes. That’s the place.”

The hill. Sheila. April blueberries. Teenage love on a spring day. The world he saw out that window was an invisible paradise.

“Can I go outside? It’s such a beautiful day, I’m sure Sheila’s already waiting on me.”

It was an involved process to get him ready; his lungs couldn’t muster any defense from the onslaught of pollen and pollutants, and he could barely move under the weight of the oxygen tank and UV blanket. He was proud, but in his protective suit, looked more machine than man, more artificial than real.

He blinked, staring out over the poorly kept courtyard, staring at the lone gnarled stick that masqueraded as a tree and the dozen bluebells that struggled up through the sun-scorched ground. After surveying the landscape, his shoulders sagged and he rolled his head back slightly, blue-green eyes looking into mine past the molded clear breathing mask of the respirator. Those eyes, with longing spilling out as tears, flashed for a moment, his computer rebooting as if it had hit some unrecoverable error upon seeing this ruin of nature.

“Have I ever told you about Blueberry Hill?”

Pilsner Madness Round 1: Sam Adams Noble Pils (1) -VS- EFES (2)

March 11, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Round 1 of Pilsner Madness pits the seasonal brew turned mainstay, Sam Adams Noble Pils, versus the Turkish powerhouse, EFES.

I know that a traditional bracket works by putting the first seeded team versus the last seeded team in hopes of having a final of the first seed versus the second seed, but I never liked that idea. It seems unfair to the lower seeds. Every seed deserves the chance to grow.

To buck tradition, I’m doing a linear bracket, where 1 faces 2, 3 faces 4, and so on. The full bracket looks something like (or exactly like) this:

The Contenders:

Sam Adams Noble Pils (1) – Noble Pils started life as the Boston Beer Company’s Spring seasonal in 2010, but was promoted to a mainstay of the Sam Adams brand (meaning it is available year round) in 2012. It was replaced by the new Spring seasonal, Alpine Spring.

I’ve already reviewed this beer and it’s impressive. When properly chilled and poured, this is height of drinkability: a complex but refreshing hop bundle, crisp finish, very little bitterness, and flavor that could beat the hell out of a lot of ales. The hop-heavy bouquet is a little odd for a traditional pilsner, but the pale bohemian malt really helps balance out what might be an overwhelming aroma and taste from all five noble hot varieties.

EFES (2) – EFES Pilsener is the flagship of the EFES beer brand, the number one beer in Turkey, and the main sponsor of the Turkish basketball team, Anadolu Efes S.K.

I’d never had this beer until I started my search for a bunch of different pilsners. The name and simple label caught my eye initially, and its popularity in Eurasia made it seem like a worthy beer to add to the list. Similar to some large production American beers, EFES adds rice during the brewing process which is claimed to give it a “unique” flavor.

The Fight:

Noble Pils starts this match out strong, pouring a deep golden color with a fresh, pleasing aroma on top of a thick white head. EFES comes out onto the field weak and confused, like it wasn’t ready to play today. The grass and cereal aroma dissipates into the March air as quickly as the small white head, barely lasting long enough for photographers to get any action shots.

Sam Adams strikes first: hops pass the flavor onto malts who come running up from the back field to score crucial flavor points. EFES tries to counter, but just kind of sits there smelling like corn. Sam Adams scores again as EFES tries to build an attack with a taste that is oddly reminiscent of chewing on the wrapper of a day-old bran muffin.

This game is painful to watch. Noble Pils keeps rocking the goal posts and the EFES defense and keeper aren’t even looking in the right direction. This sort of match up makes you wish there was a mercy rule in beer-sports.

And that’s the game folks: Sam Adams Noble Pils – 45, EFES – 0. This is proof that a large number of sales in Turkey doesn’t necessarily mean quality.

Sam Adams Noble Pils moves on to the quarters!

Review: Sam Adams Cherry Wheat

May 10, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

It is hard to be a cherry these days.

Other fruits and berries have stolen all the beverage glory. You can’t swing an axe in a grocery store without smashing over display stand after display stand of strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and pomegranate flavored elixirs. I’ve noticed a startling upward trend of the availability and variety of mango flavored stuff.

The poor cherry is just sitting on the bench; stretched, all warmed up, waving his arms like a madman trying to capture the attention of the coach. He wants to get in the game. He wants to prove he’s more than just a maraschino.

Cherry has a long, proven history of enhancing beverages. Sure, he’s getting a little bit up there in age, but corn and grapes still have starting positions, and they’re older than dirt. Corn, in particular, is showing his age. His stalk and ears are getting droopy. He gasses out after a couple of sprints round the genetic modification lab.

But not cherry. He’s been training, fighting for a spot. He’s the Ryan Giggs of fruit; consistent, smart, and tactful.

Looks like Sam Adams finally gave him the chance he was working for.

Cherry comes up strong in Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. He makes his presence on the field known right away with his mouthwatering aroma and translucent amber color. His teamwork with wheat is perfect; balancing out the sweetness of of the malt with non-hop bitterness. They pull off the fruit-ale give-and-go perfectly.

And don’t be fooled by that little, “natural flavors added”, note. Cherry hasn’t been juicing. His full-bodied, organic cherry taste is untainted by processed, fake sweetners. Cherry keeps it real.

Everyone loves a good fruit-drink, be it juice, flavored water, soda, cider, homeade melomel, beer, or lambic. If your favored au-de-cerise is beer, I highly recommend trying Sam Adams Cherry Wheat. There are some other good fruit beers on the market (Shocktop and Bluemoon Belgian White, Harpoon UFO, WildBlue Blueberry Lager, Dogfish Head Aprihop, just to name a few), but none I’ve found that carry the flavor so well, without having to supplement it with extra hops.

This is also the only cherry-brew I’ve ever had, so if cherries are what get you all melty in the brain, then by all means.

I don’t find myself drinking beer like this all the time, but when I do find myself drinking it, I find myself glad I’m drinking it.

Cherry beer: it’s all about finding yourself.

8.5 out of 10.

Who doesn’t like fruit? Who doesn’t like beer? Who doesn’t like fruit beer?

Next up: Flying Dog Amber Lager!

Review: Sam Adams Summer Ale

May 7, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

The Summer sun is encroaching on my enjoyment of Spring. Listen, Sol, we had a lame-ass winter and you got to play all through November, December, January, and February. Can you go take a nap or something so that I can enjoy this perfect, 70 degree weather for a while?

No? You’re such a dick. Next thing you’ll be burning my skin and heating the inside of my car to unreasonable temperatures. Did you not get enough attention as a kid? Are you jealous of the other, bigger stars in our galaxy?

Get over it. You’re not so special. You’re just a big ball of burning hydrogen like everyone else. I know you think you’re hot shit because of the whole heliocentric view of the solar system thing, but I see right through that.

You’re just a big bully.

I know how to deal with bullies. Fire with fire. Or in this case, fire with beer. Which kind of ruins the analogy, but whatever. You can pour your oppressive rays down all you want. I’ve got a secret weapon: Sam Adams Summer Ale.

When chilled to the proper temperature of around 57.2 degrees (F), this summer ale is like a fire hydrant in a bottle. It is calm, and cool and doesn’t try too hard. It’s what I imagine Brad Pitt would be like if he was turned into a beer. It has got the power to douse a raging inferno or a Balrog of Morgoth, whichever you may be facing at the time.

Its delicious golden bubbles are a torrent of refreshment, pouring decadently from the bottle as if it was the pure, unwavering embodiment of all things cool.

It is an ice pack on your neck. It is instant relief. It is that moment your skin hits the water as you drunkenly cannon ball into your neighbor’s pool.

It is a cold tile floor. It is the antisummer.

It also makes for a great grilling beer. Sweet, a bit spicy, refreshing through-and-through. If you’re about to throw some steaks on the grill (or if you’re weird like me, assorted veggies in a basket) pour yourself a nice big pint of Sam Adams Summer Ale. Maybe two, if it’s that hot out.

It’s like giving the Sun the middle finger and saying, “Pfffft, you ain’t so tough.”

8.75 out of 10.

I didn’t really grill the beer. But that gives me an idea…

Next up: Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale!

Review: Sam Adams Noble Pils

May 3, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Ah, Noble Pils. The spring seasonal that changed my life. For the better.

The amazing bouquet of hops, sharp citrus bite, and thirst quenching power makes this like a carbonated alcoholic Gatorade full of flowers. Yea, it’s that awesome.

Flavor like this is the reason I drink beer. It’s complex but delicious; not overwhelming to the palette, but not weak by any means. It perfectly walks the line of taste and refreshment, something not many other beers can boast.

I bought Noble Pils during it’s inaugural year (2010) on a whim. I liked the green of the label and the bottles caps. I’m a sucker for marketing, what can I say?

But I’m hella-glad I randomly chose that 6-pack. Before Noble Pils, I had considered all Bohemian style pilsner to be bland and generic, good for slugging down on an oppressively hot summer day, but not much else. I used to scoff at beer drinkers who argued over the subtle differences between Pilsner Urquell, Heineken, Grolsh, and Stella Artois, wanting to scream, “All pilsners taste exactly the same!”

But I was oh so wrong. I let my ignorance of the style cloud my better beer judgement.

A pilsner is technically a bottom-fermented pale lager. What gives it a distinctive taste is the low bitterness but high aroma of the hops used during brewing. The term “noble” refers to four strains of central European hops (Hallertau, Tettnanger, Spalt, and Saaz), some of the oldest and most established hop-farms in the world. Sam Adams claims to use the five noble hop varieties because they include Hersbrucker, which replaced Hallertau in the 1970s due to widespread agricultural disease.

These hops make for a beer that is very drinkable, but packs a lot of flavor and smell (a lot like my new found love, session ale) The subtle bitter of these noble hops balances the sweetness of the malts, resulting in an unmistakable type of beer, that is popular for obvious reasons.

But then there is Sam Adams Noble Pils. Sure, it’s a Bohemian style pilsner brewed with noble hops. Sure, it’s hyper-drinkable, has a small, lacy head, and has the letters P, I, L, and S, in the title.

All similarities end there. Noble Pils is Bohemian-style on crystal meth and PCP. Imagine that Harpoon IPA and Amstel had a wild romp one night. Nine months later?

Noble Pils.

I highly, highly recommend you try this beer if you haven’t already. It’s available year round as of March 2012, so you have no excuses other than being a masochist who likes depriving himself/herself of all things that are good.

10 out of 10.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s ale?

Next up: Flying Dog Tire Bite Golden Ale!

Review: Sam Adams Belgian Session

May 1, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Guys! Guys!

Guys. (And I use the term “guys” androgynously, like “dude”, so don’t feel left out ladies)

I found another session ale. If you remember my review of Smuttynose Star Island Single, you’ll also remember that I’m a big fan of these session ales. I love that they possess a certain drinkability due to their low alcohol, but simultaneously pack a lot of taste, unlike their domestic, “carbonated piss”, brethren.

They’re pretty awesome beers.

While the Smuttynose version was hoppy and a tad sweet, the Sam Adams Belgian Session is wheaty, sour, and yeasty. It sits at 5% ABV, putting it very slightly higher than what others might consider a session ale, but it tastes light and refreshing.

I’ve gotten so used to bitter and hoppy (from drinking so much IPA) that yeasty and sour took me quite by surprise. This beer smells very strong and hearty, reminiscent of Chimay White, Leffe, or Hoegaarden.

If you don’t like yeast, you certainly won’t like this. If you do like yeast, and a beer that is refreshing and quenching, you will like this. As I sipped this yellowish ale from my glass, I started wondering why Belgian beer is so yeasty and sour. To the Internets!

Here comes the science: Brewer’s Yeast, or any yeast in the family Saccharomyces cerevisiae (literally, sugar fungus of beer), is used to make beer. There are 2 main sub-types within this family, the top-fermenting “ale yeast” and the bottom-fermenting “lager yeast.” There are hundreds of strains of yeast out there, all of which offer slightly different character, flavors, and aromas.

There is also a way to brew beer (or wine) using wild yeast by simply leaving the wort (or must) exposed to the open air called “spontaneous fermentation.” This method allows naturally occurring yeast to process the sugars into alcohol, resulting in a much more sour, unfiltered, cloudy beer. This is the way beer and wine was made pre-1836 (when French scientist and lush Cagniard de Latour discovered that yeast was alive and made alcohol as a by-product of eating sugar); a period in history when people assumed tiny, invisible fairies swam around in their beer, creating magical happy-juice in the process. This method is highly volatile, often resulting in gross, possibly dangerous, undrinkable beer.

While there are dozens of varieties of Belgian beer their brewmasters are fond of a particular strain of yeast that results in sulfur-like smells and leaves a substantial amount of yeast flavor in the beer. This may have something to do with the 15th century Trappist Abbey beer, which was originally brewed by selfish monks who wouldn’t share their delicious brown ales. Or weren’t allowed to share it because of Catholic doctrine. I can’t remember. Either way, their work set the bar for how Belgian ales should be produced and how they should taste.

As a result, contemporary nods to Belgian ale are packed to the brim with certain strains of yeast that make them – unsurprisingly enough – iconically Belgian. Belgian Pale Ale sits at an almost perfect juxtaposition to the England-born India Pale Ale.

It’s a battle of hops versus yeast.

The winner? My tongue.

8.75 out of 10.

Those Belgians sure like their yeast. And waffles. And chocolate.

Next up: Flying Dog Road Dog Porter!