Yup. It’s Friday. And you know what that means? Well, yes, it’s time for some of this. But it’s also time for another beer review from the folks at The Daily Caller!
This week, the TheDC tackled another duo of beers from the Boston Beer Company, and once again, these guys prove that they pay rules no mind. Sam Adams has delivered an interesting mix — one beer that is for tipping back on a summer day, and another in case you’re standing over smoldering ruins, toasting your latest Viking conquest.
Samuel Adams Verioren Gose
If you’ve never heard of Gose, don’t be shocked. Neither had we. Sam Adams describes the style as “nearly lost,” and even the brew’s name — Verioren — translates from German into English as such: “lost.”
The beer itself is a good one to get lost with on a hot summer evening. But bring a girl. Drinking alone in the heat just isn’t as iconic.
The first thing we noticed was an unfiltered-looking, bronze pour with a thick, foamy head. This beer pours well. When we went in for the smell, we picked up on a slightly sour, orange (not too unlike orange Pez, according to two of us) nose that really got us thinking — will this be too sweet? Too sour? It was neither.
The Gose (pronounced, we’re told, “GOES-uh”) has a sour taste at the tip of the tongue, but it quickly gives way to a lemonade-like, light sweetness with a hint of peach that doesn’t overpower whatever it is you’re doing (that’s none of our business).
The beer tastes like your basic wheat beer, but with the lemon and a hint of salt (don’t panic — a hint of salt is a good thing) already mixed in. And we are not at all opposed to that. At least if any of us were, they didn’t show it when they asked for — and received — seconds.
That initial sour you might notice, we think, is the first hint of that salt. And it all checks out — the gang at Boston Beer Co. began with “an unfiltered wheat ale base, brought to life by an unexpected touch of salt for a mineral quality and coriander for a peppery spice.”
The beer finishes off with that sour we thought we tasted on our first sip, as well as a lightly sweet feel on the tongue. It’s a light brew, but you can feel it in your cheeks.
Oh — and drink this one cold. We started out at a cellar temperature, and decided it was best to put this bad boy back in the fridge to cool down a bit. We, of course, were right.
This is not a beer that insists upon itself (What does it even mean to insist upon yourself? Think the first 30 minutes of Godfather III. Skipped that part? So did we.), and can really go with what you’re eating, so long as it’s light and summery.
No — ribs are not light. They’re just summery. Think fish. Maybe sushi, if you’re man enough (in sushi’s case, that’s girlfriend talk for rich enough). Or sip it while grilling those ribs.
Verloren is part of Sam Adams’ new Single Batch series, which is a series worth checking out even if only for the beautiful artwork on the labels. As such, it’s only available in 22 oz. It’s 6 percent alcohol and will run you $5.99 a bottle.
Norse Legend Sahti
This beer is appropriately named. It is one of the oldest varieties of beer known, and, Sam Adams tells us, “Legend has it that barrels of this ancient style were found on sunken Viking ships.”
But before we go any further, we want to share a cool story that brewer and Samuel Adams Boston Brewery manager Jennifer Glanville shared with us: This beer was “typically brewed by women” (a tradition Glanville keeps strong!) and was first made as a sort of accident, when berries from the juniper trees Vikings liked to brew under (of course) fell in.
“We tried several different combinations and varieties of juniper branches and berries,” Granville wrote TheDC (and probably a few others, but we’ll say it was just to us because it had Christopher’s name on it), “before landing on the perfect combination. Norse Legend,” she continued, “has been a passion project — I’ve been experimenting with this ale for the past nine years.”
Now, to the beer:
The pour is really something to behold. It is a beautiful, deep nut-brown color. The head is on the thin side, but we imagine that Vikings didn’t worry themselves with that sort of thing. Or maybe they did — we’re going off the people we know who we’re pretty sure act like Vikings, and they don’t care about that stuff.
The nose is harder to pin down. Those of us that stopped to smell the roses — the minority of tasters at TheDC — picked up on hints of dark chocolate and a subtle touch of coffee.
The taste, though, is very distinct. It’s got a lot of earth and a lot of wood. A lot of it. That’s the first thing you notice, and that checks out: Sam Adams says it has a “distinct herbal, woodsy flavors … an earthy, spicy character.” Subsequent sips, however, showed some of that dark chocolate we picked up on in that first sniff.
Now, we should let you in on a little secret. No one we know has eaten a juniper berry (don’t judge, don’t judge), and that’s what this beer was aged on. What we did pick up on was a bit of a semi-sweet, piney (that, the experts say, is “resinous evergreen”), peppery taste that crept in after the initial blast, with a slight sweetness you’ll pick up on in the back of the tongue.
The Boston Beer Company suggests you drink this one with salmon, chicken or an herb and mushroom pasta. We could see the wild mushrooms for sure. But we all agreed this beer would go best with what we suspect it was made for — sippin’ on while crushing on stale bread and dried meats, steeped in blood and surveying a smoldering fishing village you came across on your road trip (like we said, it’s none of our business what you do).
As another of the Single Batch series, Norse Legend is only available in 22 oz. bottles, and costs $5.99. And since Vikings can take more alcohol without getting, as the Germans say, “verloren,” this guy has some more booze — 7 percent, brother.
“To honor!”