Thursday, December 27, 2007

Sam Adams Holiday Porter

I was given the Sam Adams holiday gift 12-pack that contains 6 beers; Boston Lager, Winter Lager, Old Fezziwig, Cream Stout and Holiday Porter. The holiday porter sounded good tonight so that's what I went with. I was figuring that they used spices to put the "Holiday" in this porter, but I could tell I was wrong after my first sip. The aroma was pretty sweet, mainly chocolate and small amount of roasted malt which were both found in the taste as well. The chocolate was pretty strong and was accompanied by a lot of caramel goodness, with the tiny bit of roasty character doing its thing away from center stage. Overall it's just a really sweet porter, maybe a little thinner than you would expect but if I could get this by itself I would be drinking it right along side Black Butte Porter all the time. I rated it a 4.3, or what would now be an A- on BA.

3 comments:

Mattias said...

I agree with you, the Holiday Porter was one of 30-40 Christmas beer over here in Sweden and as a porter it was excellent.

To be honest I think that this kind of more normal winter ales instead of the more focused Christmas beers are much better. You get a bit tired of the many sweet spicy Christmas beers quite fast. And with a porter like this it is a very good replacement.

Unknown said...

that looks good, when is the next tasting??

Steve said...

You name the day Spencer.

Mattias- I agree, I'm really not in favor of the heavily spiced beers at all, though I did enjoy the Sam Adams Old Fezziwig I had today, which was moderately spiced.