Beer of the Week! 10/16/23

Jack’s Abby Shipping Out of Boston

Normally $10.99 / Now on Sale for $9.96
German-Style Export Lager

Maybe we’re just fulfilling our own expectations, but it feels like, with this beer, Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers from Framingham, MA has reached out to Germany to bring us a little bit of Boston.

Jack’s Abby, like the name suggests, only makes lagers, and where better to go for lagers than the German brewing tradition. Seriously, lagers are to Germany what tea is to England, what pasta and tomatoes are to Italy — there was a time before they had those things … but how did the people possibly know who they were then?

Anyway, this lager is made with German specialty malts. On their website, Jack’s Abby calls it an unfiltered kellerbier with a “deeply golden” color. Maybe that was an earlier version, ‘cause this sucker is a dark amber lager. There’s a cookie-ness to the malt flavor that approaches caramel with hops that sit right up next to it but don’t stand out. It tastes like it wants to be a stout when it grows up. To be honest, with the malt and minerality, make us think of a richer version of the Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

No matter where you brew, there you are. (Not really, but it was a good closing line.)

Bonus Beer of the Week (‘Cause here we are.)

KCBC Strictly Chronic: Fresh Hop Edition

Normally $19.99 / Now on Sale for $18.96
Single Hop Fresh Hop Hazy IPA

This beer begs the question, do the same types of hops taste differently if they’re grown in different places? For the second year, Brooklyn’s King’s County Brewers Collective makes their Strictly Chronic IPA a fresh hop IPA, and since they’re almost 3000 miles from Washington state’s Yakima Valley hop fields, it only makes sense that they would use hops that are grown closer. First, a word about Fresh Hop IPAs.

When we talk about hops in brewing, we’re usually talking about hop pellets. Hops are picked, dried, chopped up (or maybe chopped up and then dried), and processed into desiccated hop pellets that look like literal rabbit food. Hop sellers make hop pellets because they are easier to store and ship than hop cones. For Fresh Hop IPAs, brewers are taking hops that have been maybe dried, maybe frozen but have not been pelletized. The usual understanding on our side is that no more than 24 or 48 hours after being picked, a brewer is throwing whole hop cones into their boil, delivering a more vibrant hop flavor than stored hop pellets can.

KCBC hops this year’s version of the Strictly Chronic with fresh Chinook hops from Pedersen Farms, 300 miles north in Seneca Castle, NY, in the Finger Lakes region. These are vegetative, herbal hops, not the high alpha acid bitter flame of a West Coast IPA. It’s like a fresh arugula salad in your glass. Is that just what Chinook tastes like on its own? Is that from KCBC using fresh hops? Or does Finger Lakes Chinook have a different character than Yakima Valley Chinook? We don’t know what specific factors have produced this IPA, but, in the end, we just have to drink it and enjoy it.

Remember!

You can see our entire beer inventory on Untappd.com!