Boston Lager Remastered

Easy to drink: a beer that is well balanced and that errs on the dry side. Pretty useful descriptor if that is what you're looking for.

 

It's 2020, people want beer that tastes and drinks like fruit juice. Craft lagers seem to be on the rise but I think that's mostly due to some craft drinkers being sick of the hazies and fruited sours that seem to take up 75% of the craft shelf space. Don't worry, fruited lagers will be a thing in 2021.

 

That would include me. I am not exactly anti-Juicy/Hazy beers but for Pete's sake how many damn brands do we need?

I sincerely hope you are wrong but I would not bet against you here.

Cheers!

 

This makes me want to try this now that I have your vote of approval, as we usually like similar things in the Pilsner world.

 

I hope it becomes a regular thing and you get the chance. Cheers!

 

I 've been watching for it (near Binghamton) , but so far haven't seen it. There's billboards up , but apparently no beer.

Small run usually = more cost/unit, as the [setup time & start-up waste]expense/ total run is higher. Guessing where they might have "gone cheap" is not tossing them, & starting to use them, before it was dialed-in.

Or the folder got out-of-whack in the middle of the run? Not sure how they operate, but I'd guess the packs are printed by a separate printing company, not BBC. Imagine the brewery starts the bottling run, then finds that. Are they going to shut down, or just go with it, & then bitch to the printer?

 

The more and more I read about Boston Beer Company's beer operations it just seems to me they now only really care about their FMB products/operations (e.g., Truly, Twisted Tea, Angry Orchard,...). At this point in time why not just change the name of the company to Boston FMB Company?

Non-cheers to this stuff!

 

I was looking for some other info the other day and came upon this comment from MJ in his 2nd ed. (1988) of the S&S Pocket Guide, re SABL:

That last line sure sounds to me as if Jackson was refuting some others' opinions . Checking the 1986 1st ed:

Of course, "SABL= pilsner" was something Koch himself often claimed in the first few decades of his beer. Take for example this quote in the Boston Globe a few weeks before Samuel Adams Boston Lager hit the market in April, 1985.

Never saw ... well, "tasted"...the comparison myself.

 

@jesskidden, it seems that Jim Koch constantly keeps calling SABL by whatever kind of beer is popular at the moment. Were PU and European pilsners seen with more prestige in the 80s than Vienna Lagers?

 

Not if you cut corners up to that point. And then cut corners with post-print production -- where assembly came in.

Worked in graphics and printing for over 30 years, seen it happen for the sake of small runs.

Print buyer probably made a deal for continuing work if the marketing panned out.

 

What is your opinion on the "new" SA branding effort? I've been beating this drum on here for a while: I think it looks absolutely horrendnous. The whole "shield logo" thing is kinda off putting, IMO but hey, at least they kinda/sorta brought back Smiling Sam and his tankard of goodness

 

Truth be told, I haven't really given it much thought -- probably because I rarely buy SA. But yeah, the whole shield thing is a little uninspired all around.

 

I don't buy much SA anymore either but I have a lot of nostalgia for the brand (I'm the only one on my family who was MA born/bred, the rest are NJ natives -- my dad was a big fan of Sam Adams "back in the day" because there was no other beer on the New England beer market quite like it back in the early 90s). That said, maybe it is all just nostalgia talking but I honestly feel like they've just regressed from a branding standpoint.

They should be going for that "historic feel" full throttle, IMO. How did they go from this:







...to this...







To each their own as always. I'm sure they paid a marketing firm millions of dollars to do market research and based their design on what current craft beer drinkers would want to buy. I think it looks cheap AF now, but then again I'm 33 years old. Maybe they were looking for that slightly-younger market demographic. At the end of the day, wtf do I know? I just drink the stuff...but there is absolutely nothing attractive, enticing or interesting about that new packaging (to me)

 

Well, remember that initially Koch was aiming his beer at the small but growing import market (specifically mentioning Heineken, Beck's, St. Pauli Girl and Molson in interviews, etc.) rather than the then-minuscule microbrewery/beer geek market. Most folks would have heard the term "pilsner" (even if they didn't know exactly what it was) while, in the US, I doubt there had been a domestic beer or even a well-known import labeled "Weiner" or "Vienna(-style)" in decades.

But Pilsner Urquell itself was a relatively rare import. The total for all Czech beers (assumed to be overwhelmingly PU) exported to the US at the time was around 16,000 bbl. Compared to 2.9M bbl from The Netherlands (mostly Heineken) and 1.3M bbl of German beers.

Although, "amber beer" did become a thing in that first decade of craft, starting with New Amsterdam Amber Beer (a contract-brew that predated BBC and that Owades also worked on).

 

Okay I picked it up. Initial impression having a cold one: It's a very good lager. I'm going to need to compare the two side by side to make a more comprehensive review. I would say: Don't worry about this. They certainly didn't futz with it to the point that it's ruined. I agree with everything that @TongoRad mentioned. The hop character is brighter, bringing a more floral taste like a pilsner, but perhaps at the expense of the Vienna malt. But I want to try one a bit less chilled to see if the breadiness from those malts comes through more.

 

Just found it too. Wanted a side-by-side , but none in the singles, & wasn't going to get 12.
Got side-tracked , & the first one warmed up to 50F? A bit strange . A slightly sour, fruity flavor , somewhere between mixed citrus & dried cherry .That, + a bitter grapefruit pith sensation is lingering at the back of the palate, several minutes afterward.Did get some caramel malt flavor peeking through on the latter half of the glass (just finishing now).
Going to have the next one cold, & hoping it's better. If not , I won't be getting this again.

 

I lived in Chicago in the mid 70s and tasted both Gosser Bier Vienna Maerzen and Pilsener Urquell then. Gosser was assertively roasty, malty and was much richer than most modern Vienna's. I remember Urquell to be maltier than the current version and more complex. Boston Lager could probably have fit in fairly well as a pilsener about 35 years ago. Maybe typical Vienna and Pilsener beers have become dryer in the intervening years. When I was in Austria a few years ago, the industrial Maerzens tasted like Euro lagers to me. And now Urquell, while good, seems pretty much mainstream.

 

Jack - Your post was in response to someone mentioning that they've seen billboard advertisements for the "remastered" Boston Lager but couldn't find any in stores. Someone can certainly look at the tea/seltzer/cider part of the company and form an opinion that that's where their priorities are... but BBC coming out with a reformulated flagship and introducing it to a test market with an advertising campaign (combined with the notion that one person was having a hard time finding it) is not evidence that the company "only really cares about" their non-beer products. It's the opposite.

 

Ok, now a cold one.....
Much better.
Some light floral/fruitiness(halfway? between Pils & helles) , with some of the caramelly malt flavors show through, though less than "regular" SABL, finishing with some noble hop spiciness and touch of the malt . A light drying bitterness lingers awhile after finish. In the grapefruit pith vein, but less noticeably so , than when it is warm.