Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Sam Adams was the epitome of class growing up. For my parents and my friends’ parents in Rhode Island, the dividing line between a cookout and a cookout where folks had money was whether there were Sam longnecks in the cooler.
“A brewer and a patriot,” they’d scoff before prying off the cap and lamenting whatever awful thing had happened to the Red Sox that year. But deep down, they were impressed. Heineken levels of impressed.
The folks at Sam Adams have been kind to Boston and welcoming to emerging brewers, but they’ve largely become a relic as the country’s beer scene exploded. Boston Lager is up there with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale when it comes to microbrews-turned-standard-bearers. Even so, the company’s portfolio is generally something I’ll pass up if more interesting local beers are available.
In fantasy baseball terms, they’re the steady veteran who hits .260 and gives you 20 home runs each year; completely reasonable but unable to stack up to an unproven young prospect with All-Star potential. In beer terms, well…
I typically think of Sam Adams as the kind of beer you turn to at a generic spot with no local buy-in whatsoever. More often than not, it’s a nondescript airport lounge. The beers are overpriced and there are only six on tap. And if you’re not interested in Miller Lite or Stella Artois or, if they’re fancy, Guinness then Sam Adams is the best you’re going to do.
That’s the brewery’s sweet spot; a realm where they remain the innovative young upstart despite evolving into a macrobrew over the past three decades. Sam Adams has been aggressive to count a new generation of drinkers who’ve been inundated with choices in hopes of fixing that image. That’s meant entirely too many television ads, sure, but also an evolving line of new and old beers aimed at casting the widest possible net of beer lovers.
Let’s see how their fall beers shake out.