In my house, summer and Boston mean one thing: the Red Sox. My wife loves the Red Sox. It’s all Big Papi, Manny being Manny and Jason Varitek until the last game is played. Being a Giants fan, I am looking for some way to change this, even slightly. My solution, as usual, was to buy beer. I brought home a bottle of Sam Adams Summer Ale to try and change the perception of what summertime in Boston should bring to mind.
I read the label first to see what Sam Adams idea of a Summer Ale would be. It claims to be a wheat ale with lemon zest and “renaissance herbs.” This intrigued me a little, could this be a gruit ale? I did some cursory investigating but got no answers. My guess is that it contains some of the herbs that make up gruit, but I couldn’t be certain.
On to the beer. I’ve mentioned that I had wheat beers pegged wrong in the past. They tasted like old socks to me until I started tasting some truly crisp refreshing beers. Unfortunately, this one brought back that old sock flavor. The lemon zest definitely added a refreshing aspect to the beer. It wasn’t bad, very easy to drink, but I just didn’t like the funk that it brought to mind. My wife, on the other hand, loved it.
So now, in my house, when someone mentions summer in Boston, I will be obliged to grab a Sam Adams Summer Ale and sit down to a Red Sox game. Yes honey, I love this beer. No honey, I can’t believe the Yankees.
Note: I love baseball, so the act that wife loves baseball is a huge bonus.
