New Moon Niceties: Better Know Your Brews!

A New Moon brings us two new delicious, specialty beers to examine from the Samuel Adams’ Barrel Room collection. The Barrel Room collection is a series of libations brewed in smaller quantities with stronger flavor than your average Samuel Adams beer. A 750 ml bottle from this collection costs $8.49 on sale, for example, at Argonaut Liquor in Denver, Colorado. Typically, a bottle could cost $9.99 or $10.99. This collection can be found at some larger liquor stores but isn’t necessarily abundant west of the Mississippi. The two beers featured today, Stony Brook Red and American Kriek, exhibit strong fruit characteristics. In most cases, if you wish to drink beer with your girlfriend or mistress, fruit beers like Pyramid Audacious Apricot Weizen or Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat are sure to pop her cherry. If she happens to know anything about beer, other it than getting her loaded, she'll find that these two beers are stronger and more flavorful and much more interesting to taste. New World Tripel is the remaining member of the Barrel Room collection.

-Aaron Nielsen

Stony Brook Red (Fruit Beer)
Samuel Adams (Boston, Massachusetts)

This beer, along with the others in the Barrel Room collection, comes in gorgeous bottles and of course, is corked. Another cool feature is that the bottle is numbered on the back (I got #3459), so clearly it’s a limited release. There are a multitude of flavors in this beer, making every taste an experience. On top of all those flavors, the beer is aged in oak barrels and has 9% alcohol by volume. I choose to drink this beer chilled, and the bottle recommends that it is served in a traditional glass at 45° F.

I tasted the beer in a St. Bernardus goblet following a pour that bloomed into a medium-size, vanilla-reddish head. In appearance, the beer looks like cranberry juice. One whiff of the beer smacks you with a great, cranberry tart aroma that is somewhat strong. I sensed a weak hint of the oak undertones. A quick taste will first provide you with that rich, tart flavor: sour, but not overwhelmingly puckering like many Belgian-style Kriek beers. When you swirl this beer around your mouth, you will find it has a high amount of carbonation, opening up a lot of other flavors perhaps at first masked by the tartness. To begin with, you get to taste of wood, an oaken barrel flavor, but if it was aged in a whiskey barrel, that flavor is not very present. The taste has a nice sweetness that does not exhibit the high alcohol content, even when held in your mouth. After tasting all these flavors, the finish will be rather dry and not all that different from a wine. Overall, this beer has so much to taste and is a great beer to try if you want to try the sweeter side of specialty beers.

Aroma: 11/12 | Appearance: 2/3 | Flavor: 16/20 | Mouthfeel: 3/5 | Overall Impression: 8/10
Total: 40/50 (Excellent)

Aaron’s rating: 8.5/10
 
American Kriek (Fruit Beer)
Samuel Adams (Boston, Massachusetts)

Here we have a Kriek-style beer, though it is advertised as an American Kriek rather than a Belgian Kriek. Kriek beers are brewed from wheat malts and heaps of cherries and is one of the fruit beers of choice in the great beer nation of Belgium. I found three possibilities to why this is called “American Kriek”. First and most obvious, it is made in Massachusetts. Second, the cherries used in this beer, while originally from Hungary, are now grown in Michigan. Finally, kriek beers, like other lambic beers, are traditionally fermented with wild yeast. In this brew, cultivated yeast is used instead of wild yeast. This beer has 7% alcohol by volume and was aged in oak barrels.

American Kriek pours a huge white-maroon head, though this can be avoided by a slow pour. Like many wheat beers in Belgium, a nice, large head is customary, and indeed, welcome for this beer. In color, the beer is dark maroon, most likely from dark, black cherries. When you take a drive-by of this beer, you will get a sweet, cherry-like smell with a hint of vinegar. Most likely this hint of vinegar comes from the yeast. While the yeast is cultivated, it is probably a wild yeast obtained in Belgium. Wild yeasts tend to give a sour, vinegar-like smell and flavor. It should be noted that the smell isn’t too strong. Your first taste will deliver flavor from the Balaton cherries, sweet, mildly sour, and extremely delicious. If you swish the beer around your mouth a bit, you can again experience the plethora of carbonation. In addition, the beer will leave a tingly feeling in your mouth, though it is probably more from the flavor than from the alcohol content. The finish of American Kriek is very smooth, making this 7% alcohol beer incredibly enjoyable and easy to drink. Remarkably, this beer is on par with its Belgian counterparts. Highly recommended.

Aroma: 9/12 | Appearance: 3/3 | Flavor: 15/20 | Mouthfeel: 4/5 | Overall Impression: 9/10
Total: 40/50 (Excellent)

Aaron’s rating: 9/10