SAMUEL ADAMS
Shepherd Neame
USA, 4.8% ABV
If you’ve ever been in a bar in the US and fancied something other than the omnipresent Bud or Miller then you might well have settled for a Sam Adams. Now available by the bottle in the UK, tasting this sweet, amber beer with its malty overtones could bring back transatlantic memories. You’ll remember humid Manhattan evenings, glorious Florida sunsets, and, most clearly, the fact that the Yanks still cannot make a decent mass-produced beer. At 4.5% ABV, Samuel Adams markets itself as a Boston Lager, yet upon first taste most people still think ‘fizzy real ale’. Roasted malt gives a darker hue to the brew which imparts a deeper, more robust flavour yet it still remains easy drinking, at least when on draught, although it’s overly gassy in its bottled guise. The labelling, with its old-style script and painting of Sam himself dressed in his 1770s poplin tunic, may sway you into thinking this Massachusetts brew has been around for generations. In fact, the beer was first brewed in 1984. Samuel Adams the man was a well known Bostonian, a pro-independence firebrand; he has been tagged ‘the Father of the American Revolution’, a true hero of American history. He did inherit a brewery from his father, so there is a link there, but the brewery went bust under his mis-management in 1764. So raise a glass of Samuel Adams to Samuel Adams the failed brewer but successful patriot, without whom there would be no Fourth of July! GT
