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Buzzards Bay Satisfies the Stock Ale Lover in MeSep 29 '05 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line This product is a good example of the style, with a sweet, malty body.
Massachusetts is known as the home of one of the nation’s premier craft breweries; Boston Beer Company, the maker of the Samuel Adams product line. This company makes a stock ale (under the name “Boston Ale”) and it’s one of the best- known examples of its style in the United States beer market. Boston Beer might be the best known brewer in the state, but there is another brewery located in Massachusetts that also produces good stock ale. The brewery is located in Westport, and its example of this type of beer is called Buzzards Bay Stock Ale, an ale made by Buzzards Bay Brewing. Basic Characteristics of This Beer: This stock ale pours from the bottle with a copper/brown body and a nice, dense head of foam formed by the small, tightly packed bubbles. The aroma emitted from the glass is one of burnt caramel and dry hops. Tasting this beer results in taste characteristics like caramel and molasses, with some butter/diacetyl notes and some good, earthy hops to balance the taste at the end. The beer has a creamy texture, is a little less clean than most others, and finishes a little bit rough, with the flavors of caramel malt and hops showing up in equal dosages in at the end and in the aftertaste. Ingredients used in this beer include pale malt, black patent malt, and caramel malt; magnum, Mount Hood, and Liberty hops; and ale yeast. This ale has an alcohol level of 5 percent by volume and a bitterness rating of 28 IBU. Food Compatibility: This beer would make a good choice of beverage to drink with a meal that included ham cooked with brown sugar; pork chops and potatoes; barbecued chicken with a sweet honey glaze sauce; and other similar foods. Final Thoughts: Buzzards Bay is one of those many, many breweries whose name has entered my radar from time to time over the years but whose products I had not sampled until now. This company makes its beer at its main brewery in Massachusetts, using freshly grown products from the William Russell family farm. The ties that the family has to its farms are no secret. The family already owned a large wine- making vineyard before it got into brewing. In fact, the ties to farming are so strong, a portion of the sales of each bottle are donated to help farms in the state of Massachusetts. This stock ale is a fairly good one and it has a good amount of body and attitude. When you taste this beer, the flavors that stand out among all others are the caramel and the molasses. This makes the beer a little sweeter than most other beer and also a little too rich to suit everyone’s taste. The richness I’m referring to includes the beer’s body, its rougher finish, and its lasting aftertaste. Any one of these characteristics by itself would not make this a beer necessarily worthy of being labeled as rich. But when you combine all of these attributes together, the taste is obviously a little heavier than the norm. Put another way, this isn’t a chugging beer or a casual drinking beer. It’s the type you taste every now and then when the desire for a more flavorful, maltier beer grabs your attention and won’t let go. With a taste like this, Buzzards Bay Stock Ale is the type of beer that won’t be to everyone’s liking and it probably won’t win any converts to the style. This beer might be considered by some to be a little too sweet. Others might not like the less- than- clean finish. Still others might say it’s too filling. Whatever the reason, this isn’t a good training wheel type of craft beer. It’s intended more for the seasoned drinker. This beer offers some good, tasty hops in the finish. Made with Magnum and Mount Hood hops and then dry- hopped with Liberty hops, the contribution from these ingredients is unmistakable. But the other tastes present- like caramel, molasses, toast, and others- dominates the flavor and is responsible for the mostly sweet flavor profile. Overall, this is a pretty good example of stock ale and I recommend giving it a sip or two is the opportunity arises. I’m going to rate this beer 3.5 stars out of 5. Its flavor profile isn’t the type I crave very frequently, but it makes a good choice when the craving for stock ale has me firmly in its grip.  |
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