As I am become more and more obsessed (obsessed in a good way) about all things organic, this fixation has been extending into the beer realm more and more as well. I reviewed Orlio Organic Common Ale back in September 2007; It was freakin' delicious. As I touched up in that review, organic is better environmentally than conventional most of the time for most things. As mentioned before, one thing often overlooked is where the organic ingredients come from however. As an example, if you eat an apple from a local farm that isn't truly organic e.g. IPM, is that more environmentally friendly than eating an organic apple from another continent? It's tricky and is an ongoing source of debate that is raging via the web and elsewhere.
I saw this organic beer at the store and immediately recognized the name Sam Smith as being organic but not local. Ah frack it I thought, I'm gonna buy it. I read somewhere that for east coast people it is actually more environmentally friendly to consume french wine vs. California wine because shipping by boat is more efficient than trucking (this actually goes into my mechanical engineering background. To get a bit geeky, the most efficient internal combustion engines in the world are on huge oceanliners and cargo ships. They are enormous diesel engines and from a lot of cool engineering such as turbo chargers, super chargers, idealized intake/exhaust manifold shape for running the engine at ideal load/engine speed for lowest brake specific fuel consumption etc., are able to get an overall efficiency of ~50%! That's incredible!) The article didn't mention what if you ship by train, which are very efficient (Northern Suffolk claims to be able to ship a ton of goods 410 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel. I'm not sure if this is really true and what the conditions for that calulation are, but I imagine it's close to that). To get geeky on transportation efficiency, see this Wikipedia article, pretty cool. Anyway, the point of all this was I didn't feel that bad buying a British organic beer despite my attempt to drink mainly local beer because it would've been shipped by boat.
Enough of this rambling, let's get to the beer review already...
This beer pours a muddy orange/brown color with minor carbonation. There is nothing special about this beer. It is certainly very average, with not much character or flavor. It is certainly 'British' tasting. There is some odor reminiscient of a Magic Hat Beer (slightly sickly sweet) like a bit of whiskey was dropped into the bottle. Blah. I love to support organic brewers, but this Sam Smith will not get my beer money again in the future. Pe-oop. I am biased to big, unique, dark, out-of-the-ordinary beers, but this beer was no good. As a friend said about another bad alcoholic drink we consumed, "So much for organic". Luckily, not all organic wines and beers are this crappy.
Overall beer rating 2/4.
7 comments:
Too bad it sucked, I hate buying something that doesn't even taste good! Have you ever heard of Peak Brewery? They are an organic brewery in NH, started by my friend Turner's brother and his friends. I really like their nut brown. I'm not sure if they advertise as such, but I spoke with them and the beer is fined with no animal products, too :)
I had an organic bear this weekend and was all psyched, but they I found out it was made by A. Busch.
Alec - I'm on my way to have a few organic brews right now. (My cousin is on a similar organic kick.) I'll let you know what brand they are and whether they're any good.
Also, as for French vs. California wine: I prefer to have my wine flown by private jet from southern Argentina. To avoid having to transport the wine via truck from the airport, I just instruct the jet pilot to land the plane on my street, a la Con Air.
theresa: I have heard of Peak Brewery but don't think I've tried any of their beers yet. Sounds awesome. That's really cool that you have a connection to the people who started it. Every once in a while I think it would be cool to go to brewery school and work at a brewery, eventually starting my own. I doubt I will ever do it though. Your friend's brother and his buddies have some real guts to go out and do that.
Also cool that their beer is vegan and it looks like they try to source locally when they can. ;)
little one: It's disappointing when you find a cool beer from a micro brew then find out it's owned by one of the big 3. That is why I no longer drink Blue Moon (Coors).
p: In the summer to keep my beer cold I have a private jet fly to Antarctica and pick up some ice, and another private jet fly to northern Alaska to get some ice (gotta keep it partially domestic, USA, USA!). I melt down those blocks of ice and combine them with Fiji water (flown in on my 3rd private jet of course) to create extra special new ice cubes. I put those ice cubes in a bucket to put my beer in to keep cool. I'm really interested in commissioning the space shuttle to get me some outer space ice as well, or even better, moon ice or Mars ice, but at this point I think it may be a bit outside my price range. I don't feel bad about all these private jets flying around because I have CFL's in my house and I drink local beer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6413023.stm
So I tried Stone Mill Organic Pale Ale last night, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not sure what I would compare it to, but the taste, smoothness, and carbonation level were all pretty good. I'd be interested to see how you think it stacks up against Sam Smith.
Stone Mill Organic Pale Ale: www.stonemillpaleale.com
...actually, this might be the Busch-owned organic brewery that the little one was talking about. Oh well - it tastes good and the website claims the process to make it is environmentally friendly.
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