The social drinker

Boston is undoubtedly the most Irish city in the United States, and arguably the most Irish city outside this island. So naturally it is home to a few good brewers.

During a visit last month, I had hoped to visit the brewery where Boston’s most famous craft beer is brewed, but my pilgrimage to the home of Sam Adams will have to wait for another day — an intense blizzard brought the city to a standstill.

Named after a New England patriot who helped to push the British out of America, Sam Adams has become so successful that the brewery now brews four million barrels a year and sponsors the Boston Red Sox. Whether it is still a craft beer is really a matter of semantics, and completely beside the point.

Sam Adams has earned a place in any drinker’s history books because the founder, Jim Koch, created a beer in the 1980s that has become the prototype for a thousand other craft beers, which have since been launched across the world. Mr Koch has done that unusual thing — created a new commercial category. Most of the craft beers available in Ireland today share a DNA with Sam Adams. So what does Sam Adams taste like? Surprisingly commercial by craft-beer standards, but there is a malty flavour that gives it a good body and character, raising it far above the average American beer.

If that sounds like I am damning it with faint praise, so be it. Sam Adams, which is widely available here, is not a wonderful beer, but it is always a good bet when you are drinking Stateside — and everybody interested in drinking beer should be grateful to Sam Adams for successfully taking on the big brewers and spawning the craft-beer industry as a result.