Samuel Adams Black Lager

Brewed By: Boston Beer Company in Boston, Massachusetts
Purchased: Single bottle (12oz) from Sam Adam's Harvest fall mix-pack purchased in Chicago, IL; 2011
Style/ABV: Schwarzbier, 4.9%

It's Sunday, or football and beer day. So what better time to review another beer from the Sam Adam's Harvest fall mix-pack. Tonight I'm reviewing their Black Lager. The Sam Adam's website does a good job describing the Schwarzbier style. Schwarzbier literally means "black beer," and is a traditional German style of beer that uses bottom fermenting lager yeast. Schwarzbier utilizes darkened, roasted malt as a foundation for the beer's color and body. It is a dark lager, so it should be a clean and smooth beer while still having a good malt profile.

According to Sam Adam's website, this beer packs 19 IBUs, uses two varieties of Noble hops, and is brewed with Samuel Adam's lager yeast. This is a year-round offering, but seems appropriate for Autumn being somewhat malt-forward. Speaking of malt, this beer uses five types of malts including Weyermann dehusked Carafa malts. The Carafa malts intensify the aroma and color of dark beers; I wonder if this is the malt that contributes the subtle chocolate notes reviewers report in this beer. I guess we will find out, eh? 

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The pour reveals something spot-on with the BJCP's suggested description. This is a fairly carbonated, soda-dark beer, with a 2-finger head that dissolves pretty quickly but leaves a good centimeter or so of coating. The beer is not really black, more like soda dark-brown, with lots of ruby red highlights when you hold the beer up to light. In lower light this might look like a stout or a porter, but it's quite thin. The body looks to be filtered and would be transparent if it wasn't so dark. The head is tan and medium-thick and dissolves into that nice coating which hangs around the duration.

This is standard stuff, but it actually looks a little better than the Guinness Black Lager and the head is hanging around for longer.

Samuel Adams Black Lager

The aroma isn't huge, but there are malts and lager yeasts on the nose. Definite lager yeast notes, SURPRISINGLY some slight smokiness, some caramel and toast, pulls towards chocolate, and definite hints of noble hop notes that are perfume-like, floral and even citrus-orange, but really subtle and hard to place. There's a coffee-roast note as well.

The taste is malty sweet, with lots of interesting pulls towards smoke, chocolate, roasted notes and toasted bread. The beer has a clean yeast profile, and drinks smooth despite having a slightly sticky or dense profile. I'm not picking up on a ton of bitterness, but there seems to be a fresh Noble hop note towards the middle or back.

Rating: Above-Average

Score: 79%

 

Not very complex, this beer is about the big sweet malts with hints of smoke and chocolate. Hints of Noble hops pop up but they are pretty hard to place. The mouthfeel is on the heavy side of light, or the light side of medium; take your pick. There is moderate carbonation, the beer drinks pretty smooth, but there is a slight denseness to the body. The beer has medium depth on the palate; but this isn't very complex and it seems sort of light or watery.

The front of the palate is roasty, toast, smokey, sweet malt and chocolate. The middle rolls into some more roasted malts with some drying. The back end continues the roasted malt with more drying. You get some flashes of hops on the back-end and some lingering chocolate afterthoughts.

Denser and more flavorful than the Guinness Black Lager. This is a solid execution of the style, if not moving beyond the baseline with some good chocolate aftertaste. This is available year-round and does come in 6-packs. I would pick this up over the Guinness Black Lager, and this is probably priced about the same if not cheaper (Guinness stuff is really expensive...). 

Worth trying if you are in the mood for a dark lager-style beer. This is also an okay Autumn beer, so I'm happy to see it included in the Harvest mix-pack.

Guinness Black Lager

Brewed By: St. James’s Gate (Diageo) in Dublin, Ireland

Purchased: Single 11.2oz bottle from a 6-pack purchased at Binny's in Illinois; 2011

Style/ABV: Schwarzbier, 4.5%

Guinness needs no introduction. Founded in 1759, Guinness is a beer standard outputting more than 50 million barrels annually. Guinness is most famous for their stout, but recently they have decided to introduce a Black Lager.

As luck would have it, I picked up some Founders Breakfast Stout and was looking for a lighter beer to drink more casually. There was a table set up at the liquor store where you could try a blind taste test. One beer was Guinness Black Lager, the other beer was a mystery beer. I tried the taste test, and ended up concluding that the Guinness Black Lager tasted better than the competition beer. What was the competition beer? Heineken Lager. 

Ummm...Heineken is a Pale Lager, Guinness Black Lager is a Schwarzbier. A Schwarzbier has roasted and sweet malt. A Pale Lager is grainy, has adjuncts, and usually only has very light sweet malt notes. It's not really a fair comparison. In fact, after I stated that I preferred the Guinness Black Lager compared to the other beer, the worker at the booth said something like, "You'll notice that the Guinness has rich caramel and toasted notes while the other beer does not." Well no shit.

Shady blind testing aside, the best redemption is a review. And Guinness Black Lager did taste good enough to warrant drinking 6 of them. So let's break it down.

Guinness Black Lager

The pour reveals a black-ish beer. This beer is super carbonated and produces a nice 2-finger, tan/brown head. The head is pretty thick and creamy for a lager, and is already leaving some lacing on my glass. I would describe the color of this beer as "Coke" or "RC." This beer looks like a dark soda. This beer is a dark dark brown color with definite hints of brown escaping the sides when held up to light. It does take on a black appearance in lower light. I'm really impressed with head retention, there is a nice one-centimeter coating of head that is sticking around.

The aroma on this beer is a lot of sweet malt with some hints of caramel and lager yeast.

The flavor is true to the aroma, with a nice clean lager body. There is some sweet caramel, sweet malt, lager yeast, barley, and some roasted notes on the back. There is a slight pull towards that smokey note you get in Guinness Draught, but nothing definitive.

Light-bodied, carbonated (...burp), and super-drinkable at 4.5% ABV. This is malty, slightly sweet, roasted stuff. This is a lighter lager with an emphasis on lighter malts as opposed to light hops and adjuncts. This has very little complexity but moderate depth on the palate. The front end is carbonated and malty sweet, with sweet malts rolling into the middle, and a back end that highlights the roasty characters and finishes slightly dry but pretty smooth.

Rating: Average

Score: 57%

 

There are so many variations of dark, malt-forward Lagers they actually cross multiple styles of beer. This is an okay beer. It has malt, it only clocks in at 4.5% ABV making is super drinkable, and one bottle is only 135 calories.

 

I don't understand why "Cold Brewed" is displayed on the bottle. I mean, I understand why it is cold brewed, but who cares? This beer screams marketing gimmick and is a sad reminder that Guinness spends a lot of time advertising their beer in gimmicky ways.

 

How is this beer a gimmick? I firmly believe that Guinness is exploiting the market of dumb people who think that Guinness is a "heavy beer" or a "meal in a can." Guinness Draught is actually a LIGHT stout, clocking in around 130 calories per 12 ounces. Many Imperial Stouts push 300+ calories per 12 ounces. Guinness Black Lager is also a light beer; but it is darker in color and has some malt in it. The Heineken killer? Sure. Whatever.

 

This is a pretty good dark-style Lager with some nice malty overtones. I would recommend this beer if you want something to session. Buy it cheap though, or look around for other dark Lager alternatives.