One New York Life

The Line-Up

• Vanilla Stout: 21
• India Brown Ale: 32
• Bohemian Pilsener: 33
• Belgian Ale: 27
• Extra Special Bitter: 39
• Season’s Best Nut Brown: 23

Best: Extra Special Bitter. If someone had told me that Ye Olde Holiday Stand-by ESB was going to come out on top in this pack, I would have thought them crazy. But there it is. Not only did the ESB come up huge in the clutch, but the holiday pack staple actually turned out to have an outside shot to crack my top ten.

Worst: Vanilla Stout. If the Vanilla Stout makes an appearance in next year’s 12 Beers I’ll have to give it a second chance. When I started this 12 Pack, I was expecting something to rival the sadly lost Caramel Porter. It’s possible any of the three new beers would have fallen to my sad rage.

Final Thoughts: The Pilsener and the Belgian were odd choices to include in a Winter sampler. As mentioned in the individual reviews, I expect winter samplers to have a bit more, well, winter in them. This particular sampler is much, much better than the trainwreck Samuel Adams Winter Sampler, half of which are beers available in normal rotation, but it didn’t quite hit the high of their 2007 offering (sadly unreviewed since I didn’t start doing this until a few months ago), which featured Chocolate Lager, Caramel Porter, Oatmeal Stout, and the absurdly awesome (and sadly missing) Winter Wassail. But, as always, points for making their two seasonal sampler packs into things where we can try new offerings from the brewery instead of thinly-veiled marketing strategies to get their big releases in more homes. Yes, Sam, I’m referring to your asinine need to put two Boston Lagers IN EVERY SAMPLER PACK.

In extra happy news, a bunch of the reviews for these are coming up on the first page in Google. In that vein, mission accomplished.

Average Score: 29 – Good sampler.