Samuel Adams LongShot Grape Pale Ale

Brewed by Boston Beer Company
Style: Fruit Beer
Boston, Massachusetts USA

12oz. bottle. Aroma is gently malty, toasty and sweet, with definable hints of the grape and syrup additions showing through and a touch of citric hop. Light-medium golden amber color, clear, with a head that subsides. Flavor is predominantly sweet and malty, sugary and lightly toasted with a fairly strong grape presence throughout, these coupled with a very gentle bitterness and faint grapefruit, caramel and apple. Mouthfeel is thinly acidic and sharp with a light-medium body. As it warms, a distinct maple aftertaste appears. The novelty of this one kind of wears off by the third bottle (no, I didn’t drink them in a row).

Absolutely clear light brown body with a golden medium sized head. Light carbonation. Fruity and musty earth flavor with malt and rye. Green apple and pepper flavors as well. Green grapes are not as pronounced as expected and neither are hops. Has a dry bitter aftertaste. A cider beer?

Bottle. Copper beer with a nice cream colored head. Malt and light grape aroma. Musty malt flavor with light fruitiness and light earth. Medium bodied. Malty, grape, musty, earth all lingering.

Transparent bronze with a stringy-lacing white head. Aroma of slightly sweet pale malts with a hint of grapes. Starts with about average thickness and some semi-sweet, grainy notes with a mild bitterness and some faint grapey flavor. Pretty bland and uninteresting overall. Would be better with a bigger grape flavor.

Pours a clear copper with a fizzy head and spotty lace. Aroma is lightly sweet caramel, bready grains, grapes and yeasty. Flavor is toasted malt with some grape and dark fruit. Thin mouth feel, sweet fruity finish. I must say this was better than I was expecting.

Pours amber with nice sized brown head. Light hint of hops with some sweet notes from the malt. Flavor has some grape, but not the hit I thought. Really sweet with more caramel notes than grape.

Bottle: Pours a copper color with a light white head and nice lacing. Nose of light toasty wheat, crisp noble hops and a touch of fruit which comes off as yeast esters. The flavor is chewy with a basic NW cookie-cutter brewpub pale ale mouthfeel but has a really odd out of place fruit extract twang. I can see the grape, but I think it’s subconscious. I would have seen this as extract twang otherwise. Decent finish. Longshot indeed.

12 oz. bottle from Family Liquors, Homewood, IL. Not quite sure why this one was deemed necessary. Well, color is a little darker than average pale ale. Fluffy head like the top of a cloud. Maybe I shouldn’t be judging the smell, as I’ve been handling a projectile-pooping baby today, but I, too, detect some phenol in the grape portion. Taste really can’t settle into what it’s supposed to be. I think that, yeah, there’s some grape that undergone a dry finish, with no wine tannins. But as other raters have noted, there’s not much that’s distinguishable as the "pale ale" part of this recipe. There should be at least one strong hop in here to cut though the sweetness and bring in some contrast. Well, let’s try Rodney’s weizenbock next time I’m here…