Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Sam Adams brewer crafts full-bodied prose


     In a man's life, there are many beers. Sloshed into red plastic cups or sipped out of icy cans, they blur into one frothy river of suds.
     But I clearly remember my first bottle of Sam Adams, though I drank it 31 years ago this month.
     I was visiting a former college roommate, Didier, in Boston. Di is Belgian, and Belgians know beer. He had already introduced me to Chimey, the Trappist ale.
     We found ourselves at a campus hangout, Grendel's Den.
     "You have to try this new beer," he said.
     We ordered Samuel Adams Boston Lager, which had gone on sale the month before, the pipe dream of a sixth generation brewer.
     Not too dark, like Guinness, a bite, but not too much. It tasted like ...

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12 comments:

  1. From what I understand, Sam Adams is now looked upon with disdain by most beer snobs as too mainstream or too widely produced or too something. This is a major reason why I consider beer snobs even more tiresome than food, wine or music snobs.

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    1. I don't get the whole snob phenomenon. There must be easier ways to lord yourself over others.

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    2. Not wild about literary or designer clothes or car snobs either.

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    3. Being an NPR snob probably Trump's all - even better if you've recently renewed your membership-you can then be particularly insufferable.

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  2. I respect Sam Adams, but it ain't my favorite quaff. Re Belgians knowing beer, in Brussels a European city that reminds me somewhat of Chicago, some 400 brands can be had in its thousands of restaurants and cafes. All of which makes a quote from a news article about a Belgian conglomerate taking over Budweiser pretty funny. A group of St. Louis citizens opposed the action on grounds that the quality of the beer would suffer.

    Tom Evans

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    1. The joke they tell on some of the river cruises after describing the great engineering feat of reversing the direction of the river is that St. Louis got back at Chicago for sending all its polluted water downstream by bottling it and sending it back to Chicago as Budweiser.

      john

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    2. Good one John. What, I wonder, is the explanation for Coors?

      TE

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    3. Coors benefited from the mystique of being unavailable in large parts of the country, as StanP alludes to below. They even made a movie ("Smokey and the Bandit") whose plot centered on a trucker breaking all the traffic laws to deliver a truckload of Coors to a big party where they just had to have it. Then it became available nationwide, and surprise, it was just another crappy American beer.

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    4. I agree, Coors is just another crappy American beer. I grew up on Schlitz, Hamms and Old Style. My dad liked Miller.He'd have a glass out of the quart bottle in the fridge when he got home from work at midnight. I'd come over sometimes to talk and have a glass with him. I miss those chats. It was the closest I felt with him.Just him and me, talking about nothing in general. But back to the main point, I do enjoy the craft beer explosion.

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    5. And I will buy Jim Koch's book.

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  3. Since moving to Colorado 2 years ago, I'm surrounded by a host of microbreweries. There's a handful within walking distance of my house. I enjoy the opportunity to sample a lot of different beers, but when at home, I enjoy just having a regular Coors with my sandwich (every time I have a Coors I smile remembering driving to Kansas City with my buddy to buy a couple of cases of Coors back in the early 70's). I also enjoy a Sam Adams occasionally, but look forward to tasting the next local offering.

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    1. I don't think you should be able to call yourself a microbrewer unless you have a few bottles blow up in your refrigerator from time to time.

      john

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