99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall

Beer is the mainstay of many vacations. including my most recent one to Cape Cod.  When it comes to beer, people always seem to be interested in what the rest of their friends are asking the bartender for, but no one wants to commit to just any new flavor so they stick with their old favorites.  I did take a chance on a few new beers while on the Cape.

Judy and I went to The Red Nun in Chatham where I had a Sea Dog Sunfish.  It was delicious, with peach and grapefruit undertones ( I picked some up to bring home, it was so amazing). A light, fun summer beer.

The next day Patty and Jeannie were with us and we all went to the Squealing Pig in Provincetown where I had a Delerium Tremins, a pale ale out of Belguim.  According to a website I visited, this is the favorite of more than one connoisseur.   I had it in the appropriate snifter (and not, as a reviewer wrote, ” just any old glass that some bs watering hole may give you”), decorated with pink elephants. It was very tasty, but maybe that was because we were sitting in an open window on a warm sunny day at a cool bar.

Later that night, we went to the Chatham Bars Inn and I tried a Sankaty Light. I thought it would be a good to try something local.  It was quite refreshing.  It is named after the famous lighthouse that has stood on a bluff on the southeastern side of Nantucket Island since 1849.

After four days at our cottage, we had quite a variety of beers in the fridge and although we could wax poetic about our favorites, it was hard to describe what was so delicious in a way that the others would appreciate.  After a couple of beers at one of our favorite haunts, The Chatham Squire, we thought it would be fun to continue our fun and have a beer tasting when we got back to the cottage.  Here are the beers we tried:

At our official beer tasting we had six different beverages.  We pulled out what we had and placed them in order (as best as we could) from lightest to heaviest so we could be as objective as possible.

Curious Traveler:  We started with a shandy, a drink that I discovered last summer and really find refreshing.  This one has a nice beer to lemonade ratio and goes down smooth.  It is the best shandy I have had to date.  I look forward to trying the others in the Traveler series.

Sam Adams Summer Ale: Another light, summer brew that I usually order when out having a cold one.  It is refreshing and goes down easy.  Here’s a link to the brewery:

https://www.samueladams.com/

Sam Adams Porch Rocker:  This is Judy’s favorite beer.  It is also a summery brew, with more of an orange rather than lemon flavor.

Labatts Apple Harvest Ale:  When I went to review it on the website, I read that more than one reviewer dumped the beer out rather than finish the bottle.  Labatts Blue is one of my favorite beers ever, but I have had better apple ales.

Adirondack Bear Naked: This beer was left over from my weekend before at Great Camp Sagamore.   It had a great taste and was considered the favorite of all of us for a non-summer brew.  Too bad I only had the one bottle.  Incidentally, if you are looking for a summer brew from Adirondack, I had some of the Tangerine and it is very satisfying.

http://adkbrewery.com/beer-bear-naked-ale.asp

Ommegang Witte: This was good, but the Adirondack beat it out for overall flavor.  I will be going to a concert there at the brewery in a couple of months and will see what else is good there.

http://www.ommegang.com/#!beer_witte9-

The results:  Everyone seemed happiest with the Sam Adams Porchrocker.  It is in very limited release so it may not even be available in your area when this post is published.  Get it while you can. The Sam Adams Summer Ale is also something the panel agreed was very tasty.  If you can find any of the Adirondack Bear Naked, I would totally recommend it.  It was delicious!  If you are one for shandy. I would highly recommend the Curious Traveler.  The panel rated the Labatt  and the Ommegang lowest on the list.  Try this some time with your friends and let me know what I should take a chance on next!