Sam Adams’ Holiday Pack and Affligem Noel

Sam Adams (technically the Boston Beer Company) is one of those beer companies that straddles the line between craft and macro brewing. If I have an option between Sam Adams and any of the macros, I’m drinking a Sam Adams. Put it against even the most macro of the micros (Sierra Nevada, Redhook, Fat Tire) and I’m not drinking Sam Adams. So what’s the point of all this? Well, for Christmas I got the chance to try the Sam Adams Holiday pack, or a few selections from it anyways, and here is what I thought.

I started off with the Holiday Porter. This was a very nice beer. Nothing special as far as a porter goes, but nice to have a well crafted porter made by a larger brewery. If there weren’t other beers to try, I would have probably had a few more of these.

After the porter, I moved on to the Cranberry Lambic. My wife is a huge fan of the Lindeman’s Framboise, so I thought she’d like to share this one with me. One sip into it, I knew I wasn’t going to finish it. It was far too sweet and the cranberry flavor dominated. My wife took one sip and made the same comment. We passed the bottle to her cousin who confirmed our suspicions, this beer sucked. I hate to waste beer but this one got dumped in the sink.

I moved on to the Old Fezziwig. I had a sip of this earlier, and it was nice. I was drinking these out of the bottles, so I can’t comment on the color, but I imagine this one being a nice ruby red, medium bodied, easily drinkable ale. The problem is the beer seems to have been brewed for the first sip, which was great, nice and spicy, lots of holiday flare. It’s the second and third sips where this beer loses me. By the end of the bottle I was tired of the spice, and it was time for this beer to be done. Again, I turned to the wife to help me dispose of the beer, but this one wasn’t wasted in the sink. One bottle of Fezziwig, not bad, but I wouldn’t want anymore than that.

Finally, I grabbed for the last beer in the bucket I hadn’t tried, the Winter Lager. This was actually a bock and again, the first sip is nice. s I worked through the bottle I couldn’t stop thinking about raisins. It reminded me of a botched homebrew experiment where I tried making a quick lightly hopped dark ale. That beer never finished fermenting, was sickly sweet and Wes dubbed it “Raisin Beer.” This was much easier to drink, but by the end of the bottle I had enough.

All in all, the Sam Adams beers weren’t bad, and the porter was actually fairly good. I don’t see myself buying the holiday pack for myself but it isn’t a bad selection of beer to find when attending a party at someone else’s house.

But the evening wasn’t over. At dinner, I broke out the Affligem Noel and this was a very nice beer. Very yeasty in aroma and flavor, but not over the top. After 4 Sam Adams and a Celebration, I described it as “Belgian, but not too Belgian.” Well balanced with subtle spice , it went well with dinner. Maybe next time I’ll start with the Noel and be able to give a better description. I can say I recommend giving it a shot. Three of us tried it, me a beer drinker and a wine drinker, and it appealed to all of us.

Hope your Christmas was merry. I’m off to Disneyland for a week, maybe we’ll find some Southern California beer to try while down there.