Sam Adams Longshot and New Albion Brunch at GABF - Part 1

One of the many perks we received on our recent Great American Beer Festival trip were media invitations to great events like the Samuel Adams Longshot announcement and their announcement of their new beer collaboration to re-create New Albion Ale.

The brunch started at 10am on Friday and they promised to serve us a food cooked with beer and we were able to pair it with the homebrewers beers remaining to potentially fill the Longshot 6 pack.  I arrived knowing that at noon we would need to be at the media luncheon by noon (which meant more food, Nick will post about that soon) so I didn't plan on eating much.   I also didn't figure on drinking too much with such a long day ahead of us. We got checked in and I proceeded upstairs to the food.   I have never seen this kind of spread, brats and kraut, fried clam strips, fillet in mushroom sauce, pork tenderloin and of course scramble eggs with sausage.  I immediately abandoned my plan and I figured while I was at it I might as well have an Imperial Stout too, one of the Longshot finalist beers.  I didn't take any notes on the beer but let me tell you, an Imperial Stout with that meal was perfect.  The other choices were a Strawberry Lager and a Thai Basil Ale. After gorging myself on food I decided I better go try another Longshot beer and gave the Thai Basil ale a taste. It was OK, seemed well made but it just wasn't for me and I had no interest in trying the Strawberry Lager so I didn't give it a chance, much to the ridicule of my table mates. We cast our votes and about that time Jim Koch began to speak.

The first part of the presentation was in regard to Samuel Adams mission to brew New Albion ale from New Albion Brewing Company, considered to be one of the pioneer beers and breweries in this country. New Albion was started in 1976 but closed in 1982 due to a weak economy. Jim Koch and Sam Adams wanted to brew their flagship beer, which hasn't been brewed in almost 30 years, as a way to pay homage to what they considered a legend in this industry. Jim spoke for a bit and so did Jack McAuliffe, the owner of New Albion Brewing Company, and that was a hoot. He seemed so humble and excited about it. When asked where he would like to see craft beer go, he said, "...near my house." Apparently, where he lives there aren't any breweries around.

While they are speaking we are handed the New Albion Ale that Sam Adams will begin distributing in January 2013. I didn't take any notes again, sorry, but I remember that I was more than pleasantly surprised by the beer and I know that i will seek it out again because it was a well balanced and flavorful pale ale, hopped with, I believe, cascade. I can imagine when this beer came out it would have been very difficult to sell because of it's strong flavors, but today it would be considered very mild for the style.  I thoroughly enjoyed this beer and looked forward to picking it up again.  Samuel Adams is also giving all the profits from this beer directly to Jack.  I think this is a great tribute for a pioneer and a reason alone to seek out the beer and buy some, you never know if we would have got where we are with out it.

You can catch the press release for this beer here.

 
That is a pretty long post for us so I will get a Longshot post up at another time. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you are looking forward to our future posts. The GABF was a great time!