Samuel Adams Summer Ale
I once saw someone reference 312 as one of the best American wheat beers. That is a barely drinkable (only can be done because it is mostly water) beer on a good day. Clearly the bar is low enough for sam adams to at least be interesting by style even if the style is shooting for a C+ when done to perfection. Mind you I don't understand the need for all these different styles. Pours an impressive amount of head, tall and white, with no lacing and lasts about 45 seconds. There is something amazingly disappointing about a well filtered wheat beer. Really, isn't half the fun of a wheat to see some yeast cloudiness? If the beer has some color I'm fine with clarity, and it is even impressive in say a barely wine, but a wheat? The aroma is of lemon zest, grains, and a hint of alcohol/spice (yes the two are mingled together). Oddly the problem here for me are the spices. This beer is almost attempting to get into the Belgian world of spices and it isn't called for. The lemon flavors work well enough, but that is in large part because they are backed by paper thin malt flavors. The malt is rather dry and has grain flavors, but it is mostly over powered by the spices and the lemon flavors. A touch more malt a hair less spices and you'd have a pretty respectable American wheat ale. The mix we have here though fails and again we're talking about a style that lends itself to being just darn bad. Why is it the Germans create wonderful wheats and Americans brew this? The beer has too much carbonation and the spice bite isnt' really refreshing which I assume was the goal here. It is dry enough to be nice on a really hot day, but there are countless beers that do this better. I bought the summer mix pack because it was hot and I felt like a summer beer. Sadly I'm reminded why I avoid Sam Adams's attempts at summer beers. They really don't have enough character, depth, and being flawless in execution of a bad beer isn't really something to hang your hat on.