Brewery – Sam Adams (Boston Beer)
Beer – Boston Lager
Style – Vienna Lager
ABV – 5%
IBUs – 30

This is the beer that started it all. Samuel Adams Boston Lager helped lead the American beer revolution, reviving a passion for full-flavored brews that are robust and rich with character. Since 1984, Samuel Adams Boston Lager has used only the finest hand-selected ingredients to create this perfectly balanced and complex original brew.

When Boston Beer says that this beer is the one that started it all, they aren’t kidding.  This beer IS Sam Adams still in a lot of ways, let alone when the brewery first started brewing it.

This recipe once belonged to founder Jim Koch’s Great, Great Grandfather who was a brewer in St. Louis.  Years later, when Jim stumbled across the recipe, he used it to kickstart the brewery that we all now know so well.

The beer started things off big from the get-go, winning “Best Beer In America” at the 1985 Great American Beer Festival, and getting accolades when there just wasn’t craft beer available at most places.

It uses a nice dosing of noble hops (Hallertau Mittelfreuh and Tettnager) to provide a spicy note that balances with the lightly toasted sweet malt body base.

My Thoughts On Sam Adams Boston Lager

This beer is a fun one.  It’s a craft beer that we’ve all tried over and over, and yet for me, I haven’t really taken the time to appreciate it for a long time.

In the glass, this pours a nice amber color with a very dense off-white foamy head on top.

Aromas are full of spicy hops with a touch of floral notes.  There is a nice pine aroma that makes it’s presence known, too.

The flavor is full of sweet, lightly toasted malt that is punched into submission with a great hop balance of non-bitter, floral spiciness.  The big body, and higher carbonation lifts it off the palate, and leaves this extremely light and refreshing.

This is so under appreciated, even by myself too often.

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