Boston Beer Company’s founder Jim Koch shares with Men’s Health TV how to taste a beer. He shows you how to pour the perfect beer then breaks beer tasting down to 4 steps and gives you the 3 things that make a beer great. Whether you like Sam Adams or not, this is a great Beer Tasting 101 class.

Tasting beer is not rocket surgery but there’s a difference between drinking beer and tasting beer. It’s nice to have it paired down to the basics.

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The takeover of Anheuser Busch by Belgian company InBev moves Boston Beer Co., maker of the Sam Adams craft beers, to the top American brewer slot. That’s right, America’s largest brewer is a craft brewer.

Pabst is trying to claim the title but doesn’t own their own brewery, while they do produce the most beer by volume. All of their brews are contracted out to Miller.

CNN has a great interview with Jim Koch, Boston Beer’s founder. My favorite quote comes when he is asked if he plans to capitalize on AB’s sale in his marketing.

No, I’ve always believed people should drink the beer for its inherent quality. To me, waving the flag doesn’t make the beer taste any better.

Amen, brother.

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When I was much younger, before the wife and the kids and in the early days of my career and college days, I just drank beer, never really thought about what I was drinking. I just hated anything Budweiser and Coors, beyond that if it was beer I would at least try it, especially if it were free. So basically I drank the commercial stuff Heineken, Rolling Rock, Corona etc. No one else in my sphere of influence, outside of one person, ever drank anything different. That one person in my sphere of influence was my father, he was a little different, a wine drinker and taster.

One sunny summer afternoon we are sitting in the yard, my dad pulls out this funny six pack with this Crazy looking dog on the bottle with wings. My dad basically bought it on bought this on looks alone never read the bottle, and wanted to try it with me. He sometimes bought wine this way to surprise himself. My dad thought the dog would make a funny comic strip also. I’m a comic book reader mind you. The Beer was Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale.

Drinking the beer the first time was an eye opener. I never knew beer could taste so, epic. It could have been that it was the first time I ever had a beer from a smaller brewery before. It was a beer that actually had Flavor. Back then I did not even understand what type of beer it was, all I knew was that it was damned good.

Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale was, until recently what I considered my summer beer. Having this beer was a sign of summer for me. What recently changed is that I am trying more and more beers, and I don’t limit Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale to summer any more. It’s a great beer to drink ANY time, and especially with EPIC Comic Book Stories

–Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale

Meet the Alpha of the pack … Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale is brilliant amber in color and dry hopped with buckets full of Cascades for an unrivaled hop flavor and aroma. This is a true representation of American-style pale ale, using the finest ingredients. Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale is a multi-award winning product and is consistently ranked as one of the best pale ales in the U.S. This is what craft beer is all about.

Samuel Adams OctoberFest, the beer I have every October since I first discovered it! It was the same year I discovered Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale. On a wine run with my father, for his last Friday of the Month wine group, we checked out a new wine shop in our area. I was there just to be nosy, explore a new place and kill some time. It was the last Friday of September and the shop had something new on the shelves, well new to me, Samuel Adams OctoberFest. Breweries generally make special beer in honor of Oktoberfest in Germany. Oktoberfest is a sixteen-day festival held each year in Munich, Bavaria, Germany during late September (and running to early October). It is one of the most famous events in the city and the world’s largest fair.

This beer raised my eyebrow when I first drank it, it was another , completely different beer, with a wholly different flavor profile. The beer held true to the description on the bottle. Samuel Adams OctoberFest also opened my eyes to the larger world of Oktoberfestbiers, and beers like Dogtoberfest.

–Samuel Adams Octoberfest

October fest beers in honor Hearty and smooth, brewed with select Moravian malt. The first thing you notice when pouring a glass of this seasonal beer is the color. Samuel Adams® Octoberfest has a rich, deep golden amber hue which itself is reflective of the season. Samuel Adams® Octoberfest is a malt lover’s dream, masterfully blending together five roasts of barley to create a delicious harmony of sweet flavors including caramel and toffee. The beer is kept from being overly sweet by the elegant bitterness imparted by the German Noble hops. Samuel Adams® Octoberfest provides a wonderful transition from the lighter beers of summer to the winter’s heartier brews.

In essence Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale and Samuel Adams October are basically, for me, signature moment beers. They represent everything good about well crafted beer. And I recommend everyone give them a try, especially if you have never had a craft beer before.

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This is a little late but Sam Adams announced last month that they are voluntarily recalling some of their beer because it could contain glass shards. They discovered during a routine inspection that some of their bottles were defective.

During a routine bottle inspection at one of our breweries, we detected possible defects in a small percentage of bottles resulting in the random presence of bits of glass, most the size of grains of sand, but some small slivers in some bottles as well. Based on this sample, we quickly began testing bottles of Samuel Adams at all of our breweries and identified that the problem appeared to be isolated to a single glass plant of the five that supply us.

We assembled a panel of food safety, medical and packaging experts including a medical doctor who have thoroughly evaluated the samples. People who bite or swallow a fragment could possibly be injured. While the possibility of injury to an individual consumer is very low, we do know that the risk is not zero, so we are voluntarily recalling all products in bottles from this specific glass plant that we believe could possibly be affected. While we believe that the number of bottles that actually contain glass is significantly less than 1% of the bottles we are recalling, we are taking this measure to protect the safety of our drinkers.

The affected bottles have “N35″ embossed on them. Bottles with other codes are safe. Sam Adams has set up a page where you can get more info and find out what to do if you have some of the recalled bottles.

Kudos to Sam Adams for not only finding this problem, but moving aggressively to correct it. There have been a lot of recalls in the news lately in which companies wouldn’t recall defective products until the government forced them to.

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