Samuel Adams 1790 Root Beer Brew

Brewed by Boston Beer Company
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Licorice, sassafras tea, Jagermeister aroma. Reminds me of the little root beer barrel candies that you’d get when trick-or-treating. Tea colored beer, well-populated with flocculent sediment which was buckshotted through the beer. Herbal, like bitters without the alcohol. The herbs go oddly vacant sometimes, but that’s just the nature of sassafras. Man, I’d like to do a file gumbo with this! Moderately sweet, medium-heavy body. Extremely interesting. Burps wintergreen. I just want to hand it to the boys up at Sam’s - they bring quality and craftsmanship and extend it to the mass market. I may not love every brew they do, but it made my day to find the Patriot 4-pack with all the different screwball beers.

Ah these 4 -packs hit Salem,Oregon at last. Quite an attractive ale to look at unfiltered amber /burnt orange, lovelly light tan, thick creamy head. Aromas of peppermint,liquorice very intence herbal aromas. Taste is strange, sweet to begin, then a lot more spicy with hints of mint and that herbal bouquet appears in the taste. Long lasting after tastes. Ok on the palate with the sweetness I expected it to be cloying but the herbal notes take care of that. Overall not as bad as I had feared reading many reviews. On odd beer, but really i wouldnt mind drinking this on a very cold night.

Bottle. Pour a hazy pale amber. Aroma of molasses, sassafras and spice. Taste was very weird. Very different. Very spicy. Not much hops and malt present, if any. Didn’t pick up much on any vanilla. Good in theory; not in reality however.

Poured from bottle. Lotsa sediment - I did my best to mix, but had to dump the last few ounces. Aroma of, well, root beer. The spice kicks in with the root beer soda flavor in the taste. Not bad, but is spoiled by a medissimal and slightly metallic aftertaste. This stuff tastes like if it could cure a lot of diseases. I enjoyed the uniqueness, but will pass on this again.

12 oz bottle from the Sam Adams Brewer Patriot Collection. I will give the Boston Beer Company credit for doing a colonial beer style, and one as interesting as the 1790 Root Beer Brew. This beer is a very herbal, and spicy brew, and I think it is a good example of what colonial brewes would have used if hops were in short supply. This beer pours to a hazy, deep amber to brown color, with a tight, tan head that fades, and a moderate carbonation. The nose on this beer is very herbal, and spicy, with lots of winter green aromas, paired with aromas of licorice, and hints of sassafras. The plate offers much of the same. Malt struggles against the flavors of wintergreen, licorice, and hints of vanilla, and molasses sweetness. This beer finishes with more herbal/spicy and sweet flavor up front, then ends with some "cool" wintergreen flavor that lingers. Wintergreen seems to dominate in this beer, and could have been toned down a bit to let the other aromas and flavors come through. Very aromatic, flavorful, and interesting beer. Not one I would want to drink a lot of, but one I enjoyed for its unique character.

Bottle. This is "best by October 2006," so I ’d better stop putting this off. Smell is like very thick licorice. Pour is cloudy brown, very little head. Taste has, yes, some sassafras and wintergreen, but it’s also unpleasantly like strongly flavored pipe tobacco that’s burnt halfway through. Yeah, very intense in spices, not much for malt, and presumably without hops. Well, c’mon, now! Everyone should try something like this at least once. How authentic this is, I can’t say, but Jim Koch had the cajones to go ahead and sell this oddball beer.

Bottle. Murky reddish brown color with no real head, only white wisps. Root beer aroma with some sugary notes. Dry with ginger and root beer flavors. Slightly spicy. Leathery notes. As a fan of good root beers I can appreciate this beer for being different and not coming across as a Barq’s with alcohol added.

My personal opinion is that Sam Adams is being unfairly maligned for this project. All the beers in the series are perfectly unique, this one especially. I’ve never had anything else like this, so there’s little to compare it with. That being established, all ratings will have to be merely positivistic, and I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be higher than the current average. Aroma is like a new box of good ’n plenty (not my favorite, by any means) and the taste is sweet like, of course, root beer. There are also flavors of licorice, mint, and a bit of acidity that balances it all nicely. Feels bubbly like soda. Warming seems to bring out the sourness a bit more, so pace appropriately. Again, kudos to Sam Adams for doing something unique. Think of it as an experience you won’t be able to replicate.