Samuel Adams Imperial Pilsner

2007 release. I was shocked to find this at my local shop the other day. Prepare to be pounded by hops! Wow! The statement on the bottle, "an intense hop experience," is no exaggeration. Pours dark yellow with a little white head; cloudy as well. Tastes of a tasty, wheaty lager with a side dish of hops to keep you interested. Simply a wonderful drink, one of Sam Adams’ best.

Bottle pours a hazy orange amber with a small clingy head with residual and fashonable lace. The aroma is grapefruit and pine forest. Wow, the flavor is sweet bread malt, grapefruit, floral, clean, brothy (like a plisner), with a really full mouth feel for a lager. The alcohol is hardly there. Cleansing this is. Would pair well with heavy food. This is well done and I love it.

In the bottle from Beertopia. When you pour this beer, it looks just like a hefeweizen in the glass. A dense cloudy dark gold with a thick soft ice cream looking white head. intricate lacing abounds. The hop aroma is so strong that it is like sniffing ground pepper. The aroma is nowhere as intense as the flavor of this high octane potion. Big citrusy oranges at first sip. Very very strong citrus peel. The tongue is quickly deadened by the venemous sting of the hops. Residual black pepper is all that is left. The beer is just too much right now. I’m curious as to what this might be like after aging a few years to mellow the hops.

Bottled. Orange colour, only light cloudy. Intense hoparoma, with citric and pine - I would never have guessed aroma hops are German. Juicy hop flavour profile and pretty light in mouthfeel, given the 8,8% abv. Still, a somewhat caramelly maltiness is present but the superb hoppiness carries this beer well from start to finish. The backbone of this beer are the hops, and there is no sign of alcohol. Bitterness perfect, according to the pilsner style, whereas the hop flavour is not, apparently.

Bottle. "An Intense Hop Experience" was what I first read when I purchased this bottle. I like hops. So, I wanted to see exactly how "intense" this is. The pour is a cloudy orange with nice head formation, but quickly diminishing. The lacing is pretty weak. To the nose, there’s a sharp aroma of hops and grapefruit. As your olfactory senses adapt to the sharp aroma, subtler scents as orange become apparent. I see people use "biscuits" in their review a lot and haven’t yet encountered a beer that I could say had a biscuity aroma or flavour. However, that was the first thing I thought of as I started to sense the less sharp bouquets. As the brew hits my tongue, I’m able to instantly taste that biscuity, malty flavour mildly hiding behind some intense flavours of hops and grapefruit-like citrus. As the brew passes your tongue, for an instant you taste the mild flavours of orange and a caramelly sweetness before the bitterness quickly intensifies. The finish is dry and pretty bitter. This is utterly delicious.

I thought I’ve tried every Sam Adams ale until I found this one. Very cloudy beer in the glass. The advertisement is definitely correct - a very very hoppy beer with almost a bitter sour taste. Not my favorite Sam Adams but I’m glad I tried it.

12 oz bottle. Body is cloudy orange. Aroma is actually weed...and hops. Taste is pretty aggressively hoppy.

Dark coppery colored, slightly hazy apperance. Medium sized yellow head. Very rich, IPA-like aroma with flowery bitter hops and caramel, some lemon also comes up. Medium to full bodied. Flavor is also IPAish: flowers and sweet caramel, mild warming alcohol also comes up. Aftertaste dries with lastign alcohol. Good brew, maybe lacks some complexity.