Sunday Night Suds - Samuel Adams Ginger Beer

This week's Sunday Night Suds looks at Samuel Adams' Ginger Beer.

As mentioned in last week's review of the Samuel Adams' Hopflake White IPA, the Ginger Beer is one of the new brews included in this year's winter mix box which also contains: Boston Lager; Winter Lager; the old time favorite Old Fezziwig and the Chocolate Bock (which is DAIRY again this year).

As I sat down to write this review, I realized the anomaly which is the Ginger Beer. The overwhelming majority of breweries choose one of two methods for naming their brews - either the beer has a descriptive name like ___ Ale or ___Stout, where the first word modifies or describes the defining style of the beer, or they just give it a cute name which has nothing to do with beer.

The Ginger Beer is none of the above as they just call it "beer". 

When trying the brew, I tried to pin it down to a particular style, but there was no hop bite, no phenols, and no perceptible malts. The good folks at BA have categorized it as a herbed/spiced beer which they explain: 

"This style takes on and beer that is specially herbed and or spiced. This is anything from the common spiced Fall Pumpkin beer to Christmas beers with nutmeg and cinnamon to ginger beers to heather ales. Some brewers will throw just about anything into the brew kettle; hot peppers, hemp, ginseng or spruce needles. Keep you mind open when you are trying some as brewers will always keep on trying to expand the limits of what beer is."

The beer itself tastes like ginger ale, plain and simple. Although there is a 6.0 abv, I did not detect the alcohol as it is masked by the ginger. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with ginger ale and unlike some of the hard ginger ales which I have tried (reviewed here http://kosherbeers.blogspot.com/2016/03/sunday-night-suds-henrys-hard-ginger.html) the Samuel Adams is not overwhelming sweet. Having said that it just does not taste like beer.

The Samuel Adams Ginger Beer is under the Kosher Supervision of the Star-K and has a Star-K certification mark on the label. To see what the experts on Beer Advocate think about this brew, please follow this link - beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/35/241782.

As always, please remember to drink responsibly and to never waste good beer unless there is no designated driver. If you've tried this beer or any others which have been reviewed on the kosher beers site, please feel free to post your comments (anonymous comments are acceptable). 

If you are reading this post more than six months after it was written, please note that it is possible that the product is no longer still certified kosher. To verify that the product is still certified kosher, please click on the kosher beers list link on the top left corner of the blog.

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