Samuel Adams: The Longshot

Last fall, at the Great American Beer Festival, Samuel Adams announced the three winners of the annual Samuel Adams Longshot American Homebrewing Contest.  Russ Brunner and Cesar Marron beat out over 1000 other homebrewers while the Sam Adams employee winner was Teresa Bury.

All three of their beers are available now…that is if they aren’t already sold out.  They are really worth picking up.

Russ brewed an American Stout.  It poured with a nice two finger head and was about as dark as night.  The first wave of flavor was solid chocolate and coffee with a bit of raspberry on the edge.  Towards the end, I got a nice bite of dry roast.  A really good stout.

Cesar’s Gratzer was surprisingly great.  I don’t mean “surprising” as in “I didn’t know homebrew could be so good,”, but rather that the style was so good.  A Gratzer is a polish smoked wheat beer.  I love smokey beers, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised, but the smoke addition to such a lighter style worked really well.  The nose was more biscuity-cereal, but the first sip was smoke and then more smoke.  While things were definitely smokey, the sweetness of the wheat malt was present, as well as some subtle hops.  I absolutely loved it.

Teresa’s Pineapple IPA is, IMO, a really mellow IPA.  The pineapple is there throughout, but it is never overpowering. In fact, the sweetness keeps the hops down to almost the end where they punch the back of the throat.  Another surprise for me.  I thought the pineapple would be a turn off. It wasn’t.  Another great beer.

Think you have what it takes to win the Longshot.  Although the 2014 contest is now closed, a lot of brewing goes into making a great batch.  2015 isn’t that far away.

Note: Samuel Adams kindly provided me with samples of the 2013 Longshot winners, but not before I had already picked up a six pack of my own. It’s something I look forward to every year.