The Year in Beer

Name: Cherry Wheat

Brewer: Samuel Adams (Boston Beer Co.), Boston, Mass.

By the numbers: 180 calories per 12 oz.; 5.4 percent alcohol by volume

Notes: This was actually the first Samuel Adams beer I ever had, a few years before I even tried Boston Lager. I had my first one shortly after Boston Beer started brewing it in the late 1990s, many years before I really got into craft beer. We picked up a six of this as a summer change of pace beer and I still think it’s one of the best summer beers I’ve ever tasted. And now, it’s distributed year-round. It’s a very light, sort of cloudy wheat ale with a very crisp, refreshing taste. It’s lightly hopped and the Michigan cherries used in the brewing come through cleanly on the aftertaste. But it still tastes like beer. One of the things I hold against Samuel Adams’ other fruit beers (Blackberry Witbier and Cranberry Lambic) is that the fruit overpowers the beer taste. That’s not the case with Cherry Wheat. It is a tad sweet and without food (salty is best) to take some of the flavor off, I’m not sure you could drink a whole bunch of them at once. But as an alternative to an American lager during the hot summer months, I think most people would enjoy Cherry Wheat.

Try it with: A taste for summer. I’ve had this beer in the dead of winter and much like hearing a Jimmy Buffett song always makes me think of Key West, this beer always makes me think of warm weather. Which is why I’m glad Samuel Adams made this a year-round part of the Brewmaster’s Collection, instead of just a summer seasonal.

- Posted by Mike Freimann