Sam Adams Double Agent IPL

IPL="India Pale Lager," or a hoppy lager.  This is the last of the new/never-tried-before beers in their spring mix pack.  I wrote this in March.

Name:                 Sam Adams Double Agent IPL

Style:                   Some sort of lager

Twist:                  Some sort of lager hopped like an IPA

Strength:             5% alcohol

Notes: poured from a 12oz bottle into my Boston Lager glass.  Came with this year’s “Spring Thaw” mixed 12-pack.  IPL=”India Pale Lager.”

Well, it looks like a lager….I guess.    The color is a few shades lighter than the classic Sierra Nevada copper.  It is a bit less carbonated than it should be, which is probably the fault of the dishwasher, not the beer.    Foam is the standard brewer’s white with decent retention, though it never really gets above a quarter-finger in height.

Aroma is a fairly straightforward take on the classic West Coast IPA.  Your basic pine and grapefruit rind, in other words.  At 5% alcohol, nothing really stands out, but I think that’s the point.

The flavor profile is an odd but appetizing dish of grapefruit and pine (expected); saaz-y, pilsner-y malt flavor, slight metallic note included (somewhat expected); and the aftertaste of MGD (not expected).  There is a subtle hint of soap, which could actually be the hops---or it could just once again be dishwasher fail.  The mouthfeel is medium with a fairly clean bitterness that just lasts for a little while.

Not bad, something I could and likely will drink again.  I can’t help but wonder how much better it would have been if they had taken the texture and color more in the direction of a pilsner but taken the hops more in the direction of a Zombie Dust or an Illumination.  I’m really just waiting and crossing my fingers for a Citra-hopped pilsner in the 4%-5.5% alcohol range, but this will be fine in the meantime.

Sam Adams White Lantern

Name:                 Sam Adams White Lantern

Style:                   Belgian white ale (witbier)

Twist:                  Brewed with tangerine and grains of paradise (and of course orange peel and coriander)

Strength:            5.5%

Poured from a 12oz bottle into my Boston Lager glass.  From this year’s Spring Thaw mixer.

Doesn’t really look like much, which is to say it looks like a lot of white ales.    The haze is proper and the carbonation looks appropriate, though the foam never gets much beyond a thin film.  It is a bit more golden in hue than some witbiers.

The aroma actually smells quite a bit more like wheat than I expected.  There is some vague fruitiness that I couldn’t place as any single fruit, with an underlying tartness as well.  Generally pretty tame and (like most white ales) not very beer-like.

White Lantern more or less starts off like a white ale should, very crisp on the wheat end.  The oranges and tangerine seem to be on the subtler side for a white ale; it’s a fine line between subtle and too tame.  The finish is probably the most perplexing.  This stands out for having one of the spiciest, tangiest finishes of any wit I’ve had.  I could probably chalk it up to the grains of paradise or the coriander, but it almost comes across like the finish of their Alpine Spring, which was brewed with Tettnang hops.  Perhaps spalter hops taste similar?  Anyway, I’m sure the grains are adding to it.  I could use more tangerine, personally.

Mouthfeel is light, pretty dry.  It’s a white ale, not much to say here.

I feel like they missed an opportunity here by understating the tangerine too much, and emphasizing whatever that tanginess is too much.  And seriously, why is Sam Adams brewing yet another wheat beer with grains of paradise?  Is this number three or number four?

An easy to drink and inoffensive beer, but there’s other white ales I’d rather have.

Sam Adams Maple Pecan Porter

Warning: this review came into contact with nuts.   This was written in February, not seven in the morning today (I swear).  And if you can't tell yet, yes, I'm reviewing all the new beers in their "Spring Thaw" mix pack.

Name:                 SamAdams Maple Pecan Porter

Style:                   Porter/Stout

Twist:                  brewed with maple syrup and pecans

Strength:             5.6%

This beer pours an extremely dark brown, bordering on black, which turns to a murky but transparent crimson when held to the light.  The foam is tan-hued and settles to a small sudsy crown after not reaching much more than a half-finger in height.

The aroma is redolent of maple syrup at first whiff, though once you get past that it starts to smell more like a porter.  I’m detecting a flavor that reminds me of Edmund Fitzgerald and perhaps Blackout Stout, sort of a light unsweetened coco.  I do get some nuttiness, and I probably could pick it out if I drank it blind although I wouldn’t be able to specifically peg it as pecan.

This tastes a lot more like a standard porter than it smells, though that maple syrup is still unmistakable.  Roasted malts in the form of coffee flavor and coco start things off.  The middle is hops (earthy) and some sort of toasted flavor, probably malt.  Assuming they used actual pecans and not extract, I would assume they would have been sliced, spliced or shredded, not toasted.   The finish is all maple syrup and pecans, with a kiss of earthy hops that I initially mistook for pecan.  I can’t decide if it has more pecan flavor or more maple flavor.

According to their website, this is brewed with both carafe and Munich malts.  I can kind of see the Munich, though not much.

The mouthfeel is a bit drier than I expect in a porter.  Perhaps they were trying to make the maple sugar stand out on its without having to compete with barley sugar.

Interesting, surprisingly balanced for a flavored porter, and generally tasty.  I could do with more maple and less pecan, but otherwise a pretty enjoyable beer for porter lovers who also like maple and pecans.

Sam Adams Alpine Spring

I know their summer seasonal mix pack is out now, but......dammit, THIS IS APRIL.  I wrote this in February.  Cheers!

Name:                 Sam Adams Alpine Spring

Style:                   Unfiltered single-hop (tettnang) lager

Strength:              5.5%

Notes: 12oz bottle from this year’s spring mixer.  Served in a Boston Lager glass.

Been awhile since I tried a new Sam Adams beer.  The appearance is a hazy golden hue, like a brighter witbier.  The head is white, though not very large, and the carbonation is consistent.  Lacing is minimal.

As I would expect, the aroma is rather tame given the beer’s strength.  Faint suggestions of grassy hops, pilsner malts, malted wheat (odd but nice, and very subtle anyway), possibly orange-esque hops as well.  All in all this smells light and easy.

The beer tastes like a “dirtier” pilsner---by that I mean the yeast seems less ester-neutral.  Pilsner malt upfront, and some definite German hop profile here.  Less grassy, more earthy with a bit of citrus on the backend.  I really can’t tell if that citrus is from the hops or from a less-neutral lager strain.  I don’t mean to make it seem like they used ale yeast, it isn’t that deliberate, just there.  Perhaps it’s the lack of filtration.  The beer finishes with a flavor mix resembling crushed corn and starchy wheat malt mixed with tett hops.  Sam has somehow eliminated the metallic sensation I find endemic in pale lagers.

The texture is a bit less crisp than other Germanic lagers, but still tasty.  Minimal bitterness.

A straight-forward, pleasant-afternoon sort of beer.  Sam Adams really seems to do these well.  I’m not sure if I would pick this over Noble Pils, I need to revisit that beer.

Epic Brewing Blue Law Porter

I recently had this company's collaboration with Crooked Stave, Elder-Brett.  It was tasty; I'll post that review later.  As I was typing it up, I realized I had something else from them in February that I forgot to post here.  So, here it is.   Copy+pasted from my notes.

Name:                 Epic Brewing Company Blue Law Porter

Style:                   Porter

Twist:                  Brewed with blackberry puree and spruce tips

Strength:            7% (release #2)

Notes: Release #2, apparently the first was much weaker (5.4% or so).  The bottle is 22oz and has no apparent bottling date.  Part of this company’s “Exponential Series,” and my first from them overall.  

A brewery from Utah, eh?  The beer is a very dark brown that bears evidence of crimson when dimly lit.  When held directly in front of the light, the bulb reveals it to be transparent, not opaque like many (most) porters.  An aggressive pour yields almost no head.

Looks black....

....but isn't.

Keeping in mind this is a wide-rimmed glass that disperses aroma far rather than contain them like a snifter, I do not find this especially aromatic.  From the bottle I get some rather obvious dark tart berries, though not distinctly blackberries.  Spruce is muted; I get almost nothing smelling it from the glass.

The blackberry is one of my favorite fruits, so I am always down to try a beer made with them.  I am happy to say that it shows up more in the flavor than it did in the aroma.  It has more of a sweet blackberry flavor, less tart, though there is some soft acidity on the back-end.  The spruce part of the beer is more subdued than the other two spruce-spiced beers I have had (Alba Scot’s Pine Ale and Goose Island Gran Gas, which I blogged about at the time).  It takes on a spicier flavor than I would like, but it does add contrast.  The hops help it along in the spice department.  If I close my eyes and try really hard, I can almost imagine a bit of chocolate barley flavor; the spices really dominate this beer.

The mouthfeel is a decent blend of semi-sweet and semi-tart, neither really overpowering the other.  This is by far the most balanced part of the beer.  A fairly light body for such a relatively strong beer (7%) leads me to believe the extra alcohol is from fermented blackberry, not barley (which would make it thicker).

Probably my least favorite spruce beer I’ve had, but it really is more of a fruit porter than a spruce porter.  My first exposure to this company and Utah beer is a good one.  I look forward to trying Epic’s other beer’s as long as I am in a region that gets them, unlike Illinois.

This was typed as it was drunk on February 2, 2013.