By Harley Zipori. When some people, especially those educated in the US, hear the name Samuel Adams, they immediately think of the great American patriot and statesman from the American Revolution.
When I hear the name Samuel Adams, I think of beer. Its not surprising as “Samuel Adams” is the brand name for beers produced by the Boston Brewing Company, one of the largest and most prominent of the American craft brewing companies.
Sam Adams beer is available in Israel at selected stores. I know I have seen it at the Eden Teva Market and independent stores specializing in beer and wine.
There are a number of beers with the Samuel Adams label. The most common you will find here is the Boston Lager. Don’t be fooled by the “lager” in the name. Maybe in another blog I can get into beer styles and we can talk about lagers versus ales, but for now, be assured that this
beer is a full bodied, flavorful beer and is a great introduction to craft beers or the uninitiated.
My favorite Sam Adams is the Black Lager. This is a German schwarzbier, or black beer. This is not to be confused with the Israeli “black beer” or transliterated from Hebrew, “birah schorah”, which is an unfermented beverage made of malted grains. This Black Lager is dark like an
English porter but is a true lager beer, brewed using bottom fermenting yeast in a slow time consuming process. It has a rich malt and taste with strong chocolate overtones (yes, you can get this from malt) but is without the traditional bitterness of Irish Stouts like Guinness. If you can find this beer, buy one to try it.
So why am I mentioning Samuel Adams beer? It’s because of Longshot.
Every year the Boston Brewing Company sponsors a home brewing competition called Longshot. Here in Israel it is sponsored by the local Samuel Adams importer, Tempo Beer Industries with the help of Gadi Dvir of Beer-d, the beer supplies importer in Tel Aviv.
And this year I am entering two of my recent home brew creations in the Longshot competition. I do this at the strong urging of Patrick Van Dam, the brew master of the Alexander Brewery here in Israel who Iblogged about just before Pesach. He tasted my earlier beers at a beer evaluation evening back in February and told me he really liked my beer and that I should enter Longshot.
Last Thursday I delivered my beer to Beer-D and from that point there is no turning back. Now I know that my beer is good. Not that I’m bragging but I like good beer and brew these beers to my taste. However I know that I am still using relatively straightforward techniques and recipes (of my own invention). But we’ll see. It may be a “long shot” to win this competition, but win or lose, I am going to have some fun and hopefully will get some constructive feedback on my beer making efforts.
Earlier this year I brewed two beers. The first was in the style of an Indian Pale Ale, also called an IPA. You can read about the history if IPA’s on Wikipedia but it is basically a pale ale with a light to medium amber color with a slightly boosted alcohol content and a fair amount of hops, making it a bit more bitter than your average English pale ale, or what they call a “bitter”. The alcohol and hops served as preserving agents in the 18th and 19th centuries to survive the long sea voyage from England to India to quench the thirst of the British soldiers and civilians in the British colony in India.
The other beer I brewed was in the style of a Porter. From what I have read on the Internet and heard from beer people, Porter is a rather ill defined style. It’s similar to a Stout, like Guinness,
but not quite as dark and a bit milder in flavor. I brewed this beer with malt extract and a partial mash of grains from a company that I had never used before. The experiment was actually rather successful and I am quite pleased with the outcome.
Of course my being pleased had little bearing on how the judges of the Longshot competition will evaluate the beers. These are supposed to be experienced beer tasters and professionals who can deconstruct analyze the taste of a beer exactly like a wine expert evaluates a wine.
I will, of course, update this blog as the contest proceeds. They will be judging during May and the contest should conclude with a festive event sometime in June.
Another thing to mention is that there is a beer festival at Sar Hamashkaot this Thursday and Friday May 13 and 14, 2011. See the website for more information (in Hebrew): http://www.mashkaot.co.il/article.php?id=22.
If I manage to get to the festival, I will report in detail in the next blog.
Continue following this blog for further updates and events.
To Contact Harley email him at: [email protected]
