Infinium

If you are a beer fan, or a beer geek, or a beer snob, you've probably been hearing about a new beer from Sam Adams and Weihenstephen. This collaboration beer says that it will feature over 1,000 years of brewing tradition as it combines the oldest brewery skills with the largest American owned breweries innovation. If you somehow missed the hype about this beer, where have you been?

If you've read anything about this beer, you've probably heard that this beer is supposedly going to replace your champagne, or bubbly if you prefer, this New Years. That's quite a tall task for a beer since bubbly has been the tradition for many years. Can Sam Adams brew something that will live up to the hype?

I grabbed a bottle of this very hyped beer from a local eccentric grocery store in the Cincinnati area, Jungle Jim's. The first thing that grabs your attention is the bottle itself. For a beer, it's very elaborate, and it certainly remains you of a champagne bottle more than a craft beer. The next thing I noticed was the price. At $19.99, this wasn't exactly an inexpensive beer. (I rarely think about the price of a beer, but, to me, this was about as high of a price as I've ever paid for one bottle).

As for the beer itself, it poured a golden copper color with a very large, white, bubbly head. Upon smelling the beer, it smelled exactly like I thought, champagne. I definitely smelled a sweetness to this beer that seemingly came from white grapes. It smelled delicious. The taste, however, was not quite what the smelled lead me to believe. I definitely tasted a bit of spiciness to this beer, though I couldn't quite place it. I also noticed a bit of citrus flavor as I kept drinking. To my disappointment, I couldn't quite taste the white grapes that I smelled. The aftertaste of this beer certainly did fit the description that it was a champagne beer though.

Overall, I enjoyed this beer. Just like champagne though, you cannot have this beer for just any ole' occasion. This beer should be reserved for those special nights that you would drink champagne - New Year's Eve and weddings.