Samuel Adams Winter Lager

Brewed By: Boston Beer Company in Boston, Massachusetts
Purchased: Single bottle (12oz) from Sam Adam's Winter Classics mix-pack purchased in Chicago, IL; 2011
Style/ABV: Spice/Herb/Vegetable, 5.6% 

Samuel Adams Winter Lager

Appearance: The beer has a nice dark copper color under low light, and a orange/copper/brown color in bright light. This is a very carbonated beer that is super filtered. I got about one finger of creamy, slightly off white head. Head retention is solid, with a centimeter of bubbly head hanging around. There is some lacing as well.

Aroma: I'm picking up hints of ginger, lager spice, maybe a touch of the orange peel and the hops, and some ghostly hints of malt and caramel that come and go.

Taste: You get some carbonation, ginger, orange peel, lemon zest, and cinnamon on the front of your tongue. This has a rounded profile with big malts and caramel. Very clean and crisp, you taste the lager yeast and the citrus adds a cleanse. There is a slight herbal quality to the hops.

Body/Mouthfeel/Complexity: Crisp, carbonated, and refreshing; this definitely is a lager. This is on the heavy side of light, with carbonation, and definite spiciness. Very drinkable but a touch thin on the palate. The beer opens up a bit as it works across your palate, but this is not terribly complex. The front is carbonation and spices, with hints of malt and caramel in the middle, and spices, hops, and malts showing up in the aftertaste.

 

Rating: Average
Score: 73%

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Comments: The Sam Adam's Winter Lager is their consistent winter seasonal. This one comes in the Winter Classics mix pack, or I believe you can pick this up in a sixer. The Winter Lager is brewed using orange peel, ginger, and cinnamon. For that reason, Ratebeer has dumped this into the Spice/Herb/Vegetable category. BeerAdvocate is calling this a Bock, probably because the beer is described as a "dark wheat bock" on the Sam Adam's website. As if the categorization couldn't get any more confusing, the BJCP puts the Winter Lager under the 21B. Christmas/Winter Spiced Beer category. The beer uses a ton of malts, including malted wheat, and it includes Hallertau Mittelfrueh Noble hops. The Hallertau are German lager hops, and provide some aroma and bittering. The Winter Lager was first brewed in 1989, and is described as robust, malty, and spicy.

Conclusion: This isn't bad, if not a tad towards the middle. This beer has good clean spices that should remind you of Christmas, but I'm not feeling elevated by the experience. For what it is worth, Winter Lager is much better on tap. So get this beer if you go out to eat. Boston Lager seems to be about the same between on tap and the bottle, Winter Lager improves.