I’m a beer snob, but not a very accomplished one. I favor high-end grocery store brands like Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada, which places me squarely in the mortgage-paying middle-class of beer drinkers. We’re the people who never miss an opportunity to turn up our noses at the welfare-lager masses with their tasteless MGDs and Coors Lights – but don’t quite have the conviction to keep our fridges stocked like those high-falutin’ craft-brew jet-setters.Still, I’m a striver. I believe in the American dream of upward mobility, even when it applies to premium booze. Especially when it applies to premium booze.
So imagine my delight when a limited-run bottle of Samuel Adams Utopias appears under my tree for Christmas. Released bi-yearly and priced like a premium cognac ($150), Utopias is the winter’s must-have tipple, bar none. For a bourgeois beer-drinker like myself, owning a bottle is like getting temporary use of Puff Daddy’s Bentley.
Billed as the world’s strongest beer – at a brutish 27% alcohol by volume – Utopias is almost as noteworthy for its charming ceramic bottle. Kilned in the Czech Republic and shaped like an old-fashioned brass brew kettle, the shimmery, copper-plated decanter elicits many admiring “oohs” and approving “ahs” when I whip it out Christmas morning. We’re even more smitten when we see what’s underneath the lid: a traditional, no-frills bottle cap. It’s like climbing into the Bentley and finding an old Alpine 8-track in the stereo console. Oh Puffy – you incorrigible little scamp!
So we pop the cap and eagerly pour our first taste of Utopias into shot glasses – which is tacky, granted, and not very good for sniffing. Still, I get exciting, unbeerishly spicy aromas: cinnamon, pine, and a hint of green cardamom.
Utopias is brewed with four different smoked malts and all four varieties of noble hops, then aged in scotch and cognac casks and finished in port casks. It’s a dizzying process that yields a wonderfully off-beat flavor profile. I taste grapefruit, soy and zings of curative herbs. There’s also a strong suggestion of rich red grapes and port. And, my, what legs! The amber elixir sheets across the glass like the most stubborn Bordeaux.
The Boston Beer people use a special, long-fermenting champagne yeast to make Utopias, which is how they achieve the 27% ABV without distillation. And, yes, the alcohol is a big part of the party – a nice, eye-opening lash at the front of the throat.
All in all, I’d call Utopias a real piece of art. Singular, challenging, delicious. The perfect after-meal digestif. For the price-point, I admit I was hoping for something more. Some small miracle, perhaps. But, you know, short of curing Aunt Mabel’s Alzheimer’s or giving me the power to slam-dunk a basketball, some letdown is probably a given.
At least now I’m officially on the beer-snob social register. Hand over the Lost Abbey, bitches.
