My Annual Worst Decision of the Year

If you know me, you know I love Sam Adams.  I mean, I really love Sam Adams.  I bought a share of stock because I love it so much.  Of all the wonderful beers they brew, Summer Ale is my favorite.  As one of my friends once said, "I love Summer Ale and everything it stands for."  I drank my first one this year at the end of March and hopefully I'll be drinking it until Thanksgiving (I did have a Summer Ale with Thanksgiving dinner in 2010).  I'm drinking one right now to celebrate an awesome victory for the Rangers.


That brings me to the worst decision I make every year:  buying the Samuel Adams Summer Styles variety pack.  Every year I buy it, and every year I regret that decision.  I wouldn't have bought it this year, but they made a couple of changes so I was curious.  The problem is that there are 12 beers and 10 of them aren't Summer Ale.  In fairness, that's oversimplifying it.  Let me go through the six beers:


Boston Lager:  The standard.  This is a really good beer.  No problem with this one.


Summer Ale:  I've made my feelings clear.


Cherry Wheat:  I'm not much of a Cherry Wheat fan.  I like it on tap better than out of a bottle, but I would never order it on tap.  I was at a bar once and my friend handed me a Cherry Wheat.  I wasn't going to turn it down.  It was fine, but it's not something I would ever choose to order.


East-West Kolsch:  This was in there last year.  I haven't had one yet this year.  I don't really remember it, but I think it was pretty bland.


Noble Pils:  A new addition to the Summer Styles pack.  It had been the spring seasonal for the last two years.  It's a pretty good beer.  No complaints on this one.


Belgian Session:  The other new addition.  I had one last night.  It's not good.  I'm not excited about having to drink the other one in the pack.


For their spring variety pack, they had six guys (Jim Koch and five other guys) pick the six beers and explain why they chose each one.  They should give me the job of picking the six beers for the summer pack.  I would fix that one.  Obviously, I keep Boston Lager and Summer Ale.  I'd keep Noble Pils also.  So that means I need to find three more.  The first one I'd put in there is Coastal Wheat.  This is a good beer and it's pretty summery.  I don't know why it's not in there already.  Next I would go with the White Ale, which was the spring seasonal before Noble Pils.  I liked this one almost as much as I like Summer Ale, but I haven't seen it anywhere since they changed the spring seasonal to Noble Pils (it's still listed on their website, though).  That leaves one spot.  I have a few possibilities.  I could go with the Irish Red.  I don't really know what that has to do with Summer, but it's a really solid beer.  Latitude 48 IPA used to be in the summer pack a couple of years ago.  That's a good beer, I could put that one back in.  My choice though would be to steal a page from Bluepoint's playbook and make a Blueberry Ale.  I really like the Bluepoint Blueberry Ale, but I'm going on the premise that Sam Adams does everything better than everybody else (their Octoberfest is better than Bluepoint's and Brooklyn's, their Summer Ale is better than everybody else's, their Black Lager is better than Guinness's, etc.).


So yeah, I still have nine beers to drink that aren't Summer Ale.  I'd be a lot more excited about it if the summer pack lived up to the awesomeness of Summer Ale.


And let's hope the Rangers win on Wednesday night or I might miss Game 7.  It's on Saturday.  They haven't announced a time for the game yet, but I'll be at the Orioles game on Saturday night.