Still Smutty After All These Years

Listen (and I’m not proud of this): I forget about Smuttynose sometimes. It’s easy to get distracted by all these flashy labels and wild stylistic experiments that hit our shelves like machine-gun fire. In this obsessive hunt for the next new thing, the old standbys can seem a little passe by comparison.

Which mode of thinking is backwards and self-defeating. Yeah, Smutty’s been around for, what, an eternity in craft-beer years and, yeah, they’re established. But the Portsmouth brewers aren’t ones to rest on the laurels of their success. They probably could just sit back and churn out more and more IPA. They aren’t. Instead, they’re ever in the lab, penning new recipes and tweaking old ones.

Which brings me to this year’s Summer Weizen. Our rep from the brewery popped in a few weeks back and he went on and on about this year’s recipe which calls for… wait for it… chamomile. Now, it’s not exactly foreign territory; a few popular brewers (Rogue, for one) have included the tea in their beers, and homebrewers can go on and on about the use of tea in general; but your average casual drinker probably hasn’t come across any of those brews. Therein lies the difference. Smutty Summer’s a staple as it stands, not some crazy new bottle. The addition of chamomile indicates, at the very least, a playfulness you don’t usually find in the more established crafts.

Here’s what the Smuttynose website says about it, in their Brewers Notes. By the way, it’s even cooler that they have a section on their website for the brewers to blog about their creations. Full disclosure and whatnot.

So, given that the whole point of beer is drinking it, not sitting around conceptualizing it… what does the chamomile actually do for the beer? To be honest with you, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t claim to have an advanced enough palate to pick up on the subtleties, not to mention that I’m not entirely sure what chamomile tastes like anyway.

But I can tell you this: in a world inundated with summer beers, the Smuttynose stands out. I dig this beer. Big and fat with a hoppy base and a yeasty body, it leaves a gentle sweetness on the roof of your mouth. It finishes rich and with this natural-harvest quality and the hops hang out unobtrusively on the tongue for minutes after. Wait - does it sound like I’m describing something un-summery? That description paints a picture of a winter warmer, doesn’t it? The thing is, the Summer Weizen somehow manages to refresh the tongue without sacrificing body. Good stuff.

I’m glad that Smutty rep went on and on about this beer. It’s good to remind myself that the established crafts are established for a reason and that innovation and familiarity aren’t mutually exclusive. Get down with this beer. Get back to the roots.

dJp

Tags: American beer, backporch drinkin, seasonal beer, Smuttynose, summer beer
Category: Beer Reviews, The Beer Blog | Comments (1)