Samuel Adams LongShot Boysenberry Wheat

Formerly brewed at Boston Beer Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Boston, Massachusetts USA

What a great beer for someone’s homebrew. Ken Smith has found a great recipe that Sam Adams was smart to make. Pours a murky golden color with a great head. The boysenberries leap at you, all through your mouth. What a great surprise.

Bottle. Pours cloudy golden with a big white head. Aroma is boysenberries all right, very sweet with just a hint of tartness. Flavor is also basically boysenberry, a bit more tart and with a just barely bitter finish. Pretty good on the whole. The berry is pretty overwhelming, but it doesn’t *quite* degenerate into tasting like boysenberry soft drink.

I’m not a big fan of the fruit beer style to begin with, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. 12 oz. Bottle. The pour is a cloudy light orange with a white head and slick lacing. There is a strong berry aroma and flavor with a nice mouth feel and a slight bitterness in the finish for balance. Drinkable and refreshing but a little to much fruit flavor for my taste.

Bottle (12oz). Slightly hazy gold with a hint of copper around the edges, small white fizzy head. Boysenberry, all right - incredibly sweet with a hint of the tartness in the background - smells like you could pour it on ice cream. Taste is papery, tart-sweet (the berries again) - a bit more like yeasty marmalade than beer, light acidity - I swear, it even tastes cold! Syrupy yet watery body, very light carbonation, sugary finish - I’m pretty underwhelmed.

The aroma on this is fantastic; one of the best I’ve ever smelled. a great sweet/sour taste hit you at the back of the mouth if you breathe right, as this is a very aromatically driven beer.

cloudy gold with no head. strong berry aroma. over-carbonated. light berry flavor but no wheat qualities. lightly tart. light cereal malts. pleasant.

A cloudy yellowish orange appearance with a white head. A strong boysenberry aroma. I’m not versed on my boysenberries so if it werent for the name I would have said raspberries. The flavor is of course boysenberries and somewhat sweet with a syrupy presence. A little bit of freshly baked bread flavor is detectable. A hint of orange in the aftertaste. Just like the dortmunder longshot beer, it’s good for the style. But yet again not a top notch style.

12 oz. bottle. Boysenberries? First time for everything. At least this looks like a beer, as opposed to Leinie’s Berry Weiss’ pink tinge. Big berry smell, when poured, youbetcha. Berry taste is there, but an American wheat base tends to just fruit take over and not show off any character of its own. At least some bitter balance from hops, a bit of tartness keeps this out of IHOP syrup territory. But unless you’re making a date beer, match your fruit to something Belgian, or a less neutral style.