New Favorite Beer

I stopped by the East Colonial Total Wine store this afternoon with Glen (previously referred to as 'boyfriend' but I guess I'll use his name now). I picked up some cosmopolitan mixings for a jewelry party I'm hosting tomorrow - with a five minute delay at the counter b/c a manager had to double check that my 21-year-old I.D. wasn't fake - and Glen picked up some beer. Nothing out of the ordinary.

We got home, he made some margarita pizza (I'll throw the recipe out there once we perfect it) and popped open a couple of bottles of the beer. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. But let me tell you that this beer was good. I mean good. The kind of beer you can drink and when you have that last little bit of warm, backwash beer at the end it's still good (I suppose that's my beer ranking strategy).

The name you ask? Samuel Adam's Blackberry Witbier. Around 52,000 beer drinkers voted the beer it the "Beer Lover's Choice" out of the Sam Adam's lineup last year. I have to agree. It plays up some fruit tones (blackberries shipped out from Oregon according to the bottle's label...whatever) without letting the fruitiness taking over. Some other beers, like Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat or what a friend of Glen's first introduced to the both of us as Fruity Pebbles beer, take the fruit flavor and let it dominate the palette. While I enjoy a cold bottle of Sunset Wheat I can't help but feel I'm drinking a wine cooler at times. Blackberry Witbier has a background of berry and an incredible smell that only adds to the beer's flavor, but there's also that familiar bite that all beers share. Plus, it's always nice to have an American beer that has a little body, that tastes and feels a little less like fermented water and more like, well, beer.

Kudos to Glen on this find. Sam Adam's has had the Blackberry Witbier out in six packs since January and says that it will be available in their "Samuel Adams Summer Styles collection available in April/May." Keep an eye out for it.