Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic

Brewed by Boston Beer Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Bottle. Hate the variety, but this came in a mix pack. Red orange pour with a nice sized off white head. Aroma was quite dull and weak for a lambic. The cranberry smell is very faint and not sweet. Taste was sweet and almost decent initially but then a distinct rotten funk emerges and its aftertaste is very bad. Don’t like lambics; especially not this one.

Bottle. After the recent thread on the subject and in a fit of apparent self-hatred or least hard-core masochism, I decided I had to try this beer.

Wow. This one didn’t let me down. It was as weird and as far from a lambic as I had expected from SA. Indeed, this was a strange and unfortunate concoction. A mild sour off aroma with some sticky fruit-juice notes, stale Coors spilled on the floor of a mildewed cellar. Flavor like a rank wheat beer cut with syrup (which I suppose is more an accurate description than it is a simile.)

On the positive side,

(1) I could taste enough funk that I can at least understand why they call it a lambic instead of a wine cooler,

(2) I actually managed finished the bottle.

(3) My curiosity satisfied, I have no need to ever return to this stuff.

Poured into a flute with a medium frothy off white head. Nose of yeast, tart cranberries and resin. Initial taste of cranberries, sweet malts, sugar and some barnyard funk. But overall the flavor is muted and not very mouth pleasing. The next layer is vinous but short. Finishing with a mild berry and dry palate. Resin is also apparent. Good lacing of the glass and head retention. Least there is one impressive aspect. Palate duration is short, light to medium body.

12oz bottle from Winter Sampler. Pours an amber body with orange highlights. The beer is topped by a 1.5 finger thick, loose, foamy white head. Decent retention and pretty nice lacing. Nose is artificial cranberries, brown sugar, molasses and vinegar. Pretty muted which I guess is sort of a good thing. Fore is acidic fruits, cranberry, preserves, .sweet sugars. Funky yeast and berries highlight the back end. Light bodied, acidic and heavily astringent. Finish is the worst part of the beer, fully concentrated artificial cranberry in ungodly amounts, with an off putting sour funk to go along with it. I love sour beers, but for some reason this combination is triggering my gag reflex. Maybe because it’s unbearably sweet at the same time, and there is that whole artificial/metallic thing going on with the berries. Unfortunately this stays with you for quite a while. Not good, glad I gave my other bottle away. Gets worse the more you drink of it so ultimately this is a drain pour.

BASICALLY THIS is a decent ale made better with a true cranberry taste. it has a respectable sweetness and should appeal to those who arent so fond of wheat belgian beers. it has a nice touch of sour that moderateley lasts and fades nicely. good tingly carbonation substantive and not overdone it is reserved. just the right yeasitness. nice off type look to it made more appealing by the light cloudiness. no alcohol taste.

THOUGHTS: I have no clue why they call this one a lambic. I haven’t had many lambics, but this is not anywhere near a lambic. The honey like aroma and flavor due to the maple syrup kind of defeats the purpose of making a cranberry beer. The craberries are there but they just don’t seem to be the ceterpiece of a beer named after them. TECHNICAL: Bottle. Poured a flat, light to medium orangey amber with tiny particles thinly dispersed in the body and a large, just barely off-white head that mostly diminished but left good lacing. The aroma was maple syrup and cranberry. The two made sort of a honey aroma. The initial flavor was lightly sweet, while the finish was moderately to heavily acidic and sour with an average duration. The flavor was maple syrup, honey and cranberry. The cranberry was strongest in the finish. The medium body was slightly syrupy and somewhat dry with lightly tingly carbonation and a moderately astringent finish.

I really disliked this one. Appearance is nearly pink/brown. Flavor is sour and of cranberries. Definitely tart like Arayaga says. Glad I got this one from the Winter Classics pack. 12 oz. bottle.

Reddish brown with almost no head. Aroma is sweet and funky like Camembert and jam. Tingly spicy ginger tartness and yes, cranberry, as if from a can. Moderate sweetness with some vanilla in the finish. This is not a lambic, but is enjoyable in its own right. $2/12oz