Taste of the Year: Samuel Adams Utopias - January 2008
Choosing the Taste of the Year is always a challenge for me, involving as it does a thorough mental review of pretty much everything I've tasted through the previous twelve months. Making matters that much more difficult, a few years ago I also introduced a policy of rendering inadmissible for the honour all the last eleven Tastes of the Month, working on the theory that each of those has already received its due recognition.
For 2007, however, one beer came quickly to mind, not necessarily because it was the best beer I tasted over the course of the year, but because its creation represented a convergence of innovation, art and science. It is the world's strongest beer: Samuel Adams Utopias from the Boston Beer Company.
Weighing in at a hefty 27% alcohol, a good 2% stronger than the two previous releases of this very limited edition brew, the current incarnation of Utopias is also considerably more complex than its predecessors, a result of the studious blending of existing barrel-aged beers into the final product. I still find it too sweet at such a youthful age, with far too much of its maple syrup priming agent in evidence, but unlike past attempts by Boston Beer, this Utopias is certainly sippable at present, although I suspect the bottle I stuck deep in my cellar will emerge in a decade or two in far better form.
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