Beer of the Week Special

Sam Adams Brewery Tour

Beer of the Week took in on the road last weekend and visited the Sam Adams Brewery in Boston. Here is a little recap and review of their facility.

The first place you walk into at the Sam Adams complex is a very cool lobby area. They have displays showing many things, including history of the brewery, awards they have won, and history of beer brewing in Boston. They also have a counter with free copies of many different beer brewing newsletters and Beer Advocate magazine (a Beer of the Week favorite). One immediately sees that the people who run Sam Adams care about great beer, not just their own product.

So after milling around the lobby for a few minutes the tour begins. First, you walk through a huge old glass lined beer barrel. You walk through the working brewery and into a little room. In this room the tour guide gives some history and then passes around barley for you to smell (and eat if you choose) and hops. She told us to crush the hops in our hand and smell it, just like their founder Jim Koch (pronounced "Cook", not as if it rhymes with "watch" like I thought) does in all of the Sam Adams commercials.

Then you walk into the working part of the brewery. This facility brews everything but the Boston Lager. My only complaint of the tour was that this room is loud, probably because of the working brewery happening around you. The tour guide explains the beer brewing process while in this room.

You then proceed to the part of the tour everyone waits for, the tasting room. Everyone of age is given a seven ounce glass with the Sam Adams logo and sits down at long banquet style tables. The first thing they do is explain the five things to evaluate when tasting and judging beer: 1. Color and opacity, 2. Aroma, 3. Mouthfeel and sweetness, 4. Bitterness, and 5. Overall appeal. They then pass pitchers of three different beers down the tables for everyone to sample. The first sample is always Boston Lager (the best Boston Lager I've ever had, by the way). The next sample is always the current seasonal brew, in this case the Summer Ale which is just now hitting stores. The third sample is always different and could be any one of the almost three dozen other beers Sam Adams brews. In this case we had a Pilsner that is not commercially available. They said it has a spicy aroma and nice flavor but after many samples (I may have filled my glass when the pitchers were coming and going) on an empty stomach, I couldn't tell.
Because the third sample is always different it is worth making multiple trips to the brewery.

The tour is free, a $2 donation for charity is suggested. There is the requisite overpriced gift shop (although I did buy a "Perfect Pint" glass). The brewery is very easy to get to, either by driving or taking the T. They maintain a fun and welcoming atmosphere and you learn a lot about the brewery, the company, the Koch family (for instance, the Boston Lager recipe was Koch's great-grandfather's and he found it in an attic. Koch won a major award at the Great American Beer Festival a year after brewing the first batch in his kitchen), and the history of beer (much more than I could get into here). I had a great time and would go back again. I would highly suggest that everyone visit.

- Gabe