Samuel Adams East-West Kölsch

Brewed By: Boston Beer Company in Boston, Massachusetts
Purchased: 12oz bottle from the Sam Adams Summer Styles, from Jewel-Osco in Chicago, IL; 2012
Style/ABV: Kölsch, 5.0%

Tonight I'm beginning to work my way through the Sam Adams Summer Styles seasonal mix-pack. Before we get started, a word on Sam Adams:

Samuel Adams was founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, and currently the Boston Beer Company is the largest American-owned beer company in the United States. Sam Adams is also the largest craft brewer in America, with over a million barrels of beer being produced annually. You can check out the Sam Adam's website for more info. 

Today's beer, the East-West Kölsch, is described as a light and fragrant beer with a floral and herbal character. Sam Adams states that this beer is brewed in the German Kölsch style. They actually give some style info, noting that a "classic Kölsch is less bitter than a pilsner with a slightly fruity and sweet biscuit note." This beer uses Alsatian Strisselspalt hops for lemon and grassy notes, and this beer is also aged with Jasmine Sambac (a fragrant flower that blooms at night from Southeast Asia). This beer is supposed to have an added layer of floral aromas and flavors. Clocking in at 5.0% ABV and 15 IBus, this should be a pleasant if not mild beer. 

I haven't talked much about the Kölsch style, so I'll provide a quick style summary before jumping into the review. You can check out the BJCP's Kölsch page, but you won't get a ton of history or info on the style. According to Wikipedia, Kölsch is a beer brewed in Cologne, Germany. The beer has prominent, but not extreme hoppiness, and is less bitter than a standard German Pale Lager. This beer is warm fermented, and then cold-conditioned (or lagered), making it a bit of a hybrid. This style of fermentation is similar to other styles of beer in central northern Europe, including German Altbiers. The Kölsch style is strictly defined by the "Kölsch Konvention," an agreement between the Cologne Brewery Association's members. The style is pale, hoppy, highly attenuated, clear, and top-fermenting. 

Another good article on the history of the Kölsch is the German Beer Institute's article. They give a lengthy history, but I really like their definition of the style:

One of only a handful of traditional German ales. Kölsch is the local brew of the city of Cologne ("Köln" in German). It is one of the palest German beers made. It is Germany's answer to the British pale ale. It shares a history with the copper-colored Altbier made in Düsseldorf, some 44 km down the Rhine from Cologne. Just as the British pale ale emerged from the British brown ale in the 19th century, when pale malt became readily available, so did the Kölsch separate itself from Altbier around the same time. In 1948, the brewers of Kölsch joined forces in the so-called Kölsch Convention and formalized the Kölsch style in terms of modern brewing specifications. Kölsch, like Altbier, gets its characteristic, slightly fruity flavor from its own special ale yeast, with which the brew is cool-fermented and then aged and mellowed (or "lagered") near the freezing point. Kölsch is always served in a straight-side, narrow, 0.2-liter (6¾ fluid ounces) glass called a Stange ("stick," "pole" or "rod"). Kölsch is available only sporadically in the United States. The two brands that can be found in specialty beer stores in some areas of the country are Reissforf and Gaffel.

The German Beer Institute goes on to describe the style. They say that Kölsch is a subtle and delicate style of beer. It is light in body (and appearance), has subdued maltiness, and unobtrusive hoppiness. Unlike any of the German blond lagers, the Kölsch imparts some ale-type fruitiness on the palate. I highly recommend you check out the German Beer Institute's Kölsch page, as it is way more informative than I can be in this narrow space. With that said, let's get on with the review!

Samuel Adams East-West Kölsch

The beer pours a golden/yellow color, with 4-fingers worth of super white head. This is a clear, transparent beer, with big fat bubbles of carbonation. When held in bright light, this beer is super pale-gold/yellow, super transparent, and looks a lot like a Pale Lager. The only thing different between this and your typical Pale Lager is that an inch of foamy, fluffy, white head is hanging around.

The nose is super mild: I'm getting cherries, a hint of dough, and maybe a hint of light, light hop twang.

The taste on this is light, watery (but not in a bad way), slightly malty, and slightly flowery. I don't know if I pull out Jasmine in particular, but there is definitely a floral note in the taste of this beer. I'm pulling out some hints of dough or crackers as well, and a pleasant hint of very light fruitiness (cherries).

Where did the 5.0% ABV go? I mean it's kind of there on the back end. This is super light, super drinkable, and very pleasant. This, to me, teeters between being a Spring beer and a Summer beer. The mouthfeel is smooth, light, and lightly carbonated (surprisingly). Complexity is low, palate depth is medium to high; this style isn't inherently about walloping your palate. Up front you get some sweet notes, some hints of malt, some floral notes; the middle is crisp and refreshing with more floral notes; the back is lingering fruit and fading malt, crisp and filling and refreshing.

Rating: Average

 

I'm going with a pretty Strong Average rating on this. There's not a whole lot to say. This is a very clean, very refreshing, slightly fruity beer.

State of the Blog: Ratings Revised, Part II

Part I of "Ratings Revised" can be found HERE. In the interest of avoiding arbitrary numbers that force me to rank beers, I have decided to simplify how I rate my beer. I rate all my beers according to their style. That means that all IPAs get compared to other IPAs. Brown Ales will get stacked up against other Brown Ales. I will NEVER do an apples vs. oranges comparison. All the beer I score will be ranked according to these five categories:

Sewage (WTF did I just drink?) – reserved for legitimate swill like Budweiser Chelada, this category is for beer that is not drinkable. Very few beers should make it into this category, and I would never put a beer into this category that has been exposed to the sun or that has an obvious defect.

Below-Average – crappy beer goes here. Any beer that gets this rating has some obvious style shortcomings, is particularly uneventful, or just misses the mark.

Average – these are beers that are drinkable, follow the guidelines of the style they represent, and don’t have too many shortcomings. The difference between an average beer and an above-average beer is that average beers do not separate themselves from the pack. 

Above-Average – these are beers that not only meet the style guidelines, but go above and beyond to provide a unique drinking experience. 

Divine Brew – reserved for the best of the best, divine beers are going to be at the top of the class. These are really special beers. 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

In addition to these five categories, I might include some totally meaningless, touchy-feely type words, like:

"I feel like this beer is a Strong Above-Average beer."

These touchy-feely words are totally arbitrary, and don't mean anything, other than how I'm feeling at the time. I can't claim originality to this idea, as the original idea goes to The Needle Drop. The Needle Drop is one of my favorite music blogs, run by Anthony Fantano, "the Internet's busiest music nerd." He rates all his albums on a scale of 0 to 10, with an accompanying "light," "decent," or "strong." 

I'm a fan of this approach, because I think it works well with an actual review. This seems similar to BeerAdvocate's letter grade system (C- vs. C vs. C+), but I think this is a little bit different. Saying that "I think this is a Strong Above-Average beer" simply captures the fact that I am confident this is an Above-Average beer. I've certainly had beers that have teetered between Average and Above-Average.

I don't know if I will use this approach in every review. The main thing is that I want to cut my reviews down to the five main categories, and get people (myself included) to focus on the actual content of the review. I'm not a huge fan of Ratebeer or BeerAdvocate, and to some extent I'm even less of a fan of trying to rank good beers of similar style (what's the point? good beer is good beer). 

With that said, there are going to be no more numbers; I want to get rid of arbitrary rankings. At a certain point, it becomes an exercise in futility to try and rank Above-Average and Divine Brew beers. If the beer is good, drink it.

With all that said, cheers.

State of the Blog: Ratings Revised, Part I

It's hard being a blogger, writing out my opinions on beer. Wait...no, it isn't. Basically, I drink beer, and then fart around about what I like about it. Dammit, if only I was getting paid. 

I've reached a weird crossroad in my beer-drinking career. I want to keep reviewing and drinking beer, but I want to focus on what really matters. The Review. The review mainly consists of the words, and not the score that I tack on at the end of it. When I started the blog, I came up with THIS SYSTEM to review beer. I still really like the five categories: Sewage, Below-Average, Average, Above-Average, and Divine Brew. But what's the point of the number/percentage scores? First off, the percentage scores are pretty arbitrary. And second, they make it a pain in the ass to score beers.

Percentages and numbers can "go suck an egg."

Let's look at my break-down of Imperial IPAs. Thus far I have reviewed six Imperial IPAs. We can notice some interesting trends: for example, they all have done fairly well (and this makes sense, and I'll get back to that in a minute). But my main concern is the ridiculous percentage scores that I've forced myself to use. For example, I rated the Green Flash Imperial IPA as an Above-Average beer at 89%. And then I rated Dogfish Head's 90 Minute IPA as an Above-Average beer at 84%. The fact is, these are both Above-Average beers. It seems kind of arbitrary and dumb to try to rank which beer is better.

More so...and this is another huge problem...the Green Flash Imperial IPA is a West Coast Imperial IPA. It has huge juicy hops, it is dank as hell, and it has a distinctly different profile than the 90 Minute. The 90 Minute IPA seems more like an "East Coast" IPA, with more subtle hop punch, and notes of booze and brandy. To objectively try to differentiate between these two beers is like comparing an apple to an orange. And I fucking hate apple and orange comparisons. 

Another example would be comparing Tripel Karmeliet to the Chimay White. These are both beers that I rated as "Divine Brew". Although I rated the Karmeliet at a 98% and the Chimay at 93%, who is to say that one is really better than the other? The Chimay is a malt bomb (apple), and the Karmeliet is this refined beer with huge grain profiles (orange). Even though they are both Tripels, they are dramatically different. 

And so, we now get to the next dilemma. I'm scrolling down the blog page, and seeing a lot of beers rated at Above-Average. There is probably some Selection Bias at play here, as I probably have a tendency to shop for good beer. At some point, I hope I will have had the opportunity to try all the really good beer, so then I can drink some crappy beer and get all nasty in my reviews. Until then.....

My last concern (I swear) has to relate to the incredibly vague style guidelines. The other night, I drank Founders' All Day IPA. It was a damn good beer, but I felt obligated to review it compared to other IPAs because it is labeled as a freakin' IPA. Honestly, the beer drank like a Pale Ale in a lot of ways, and I wanted to review it as such. The fact is, style guidelines are important, but they aren't dogma. As such, if I'm drinking a Porter that drinks like a strong Stout, or if I'm drinking an IPA that is like a Pale Ale, I'm going to make note of it in "The Review," and score it as such. 

I still am going to avoid Apples to Oranges comparisons. I hate that shit, and you should too. A Dry Stout can't compare fairly to an Imperial Stout. It just can't. Hell, if you just read this post, you see that I'm having a hard time reviewing Imperial IPAs and Tripels, because THERE IS VARIATION WITHIN THESE PRETTY CLEARLY DEFINED STYLES!!!!!!!! 

So with all that said....I now present my new review system in [Part 2] of this post.