Why does Samuel Adams Boston Lager taste so much better than many other Lagers?

It all just comes down to preferred taste. Some beers ( to me ) taste much better on tap rather in the bottle. Dos Equis tastes very different bottled and Boston Lager falls somewhat in that category for me as well. I also have enjoyed Smithwicks on tap but it is much inferior when bottled. My least favorite is canned beer. I will drink it in a pinch...but always taste the damn can...

 

Haven't found a Samuel Adams brew I'm crazy about but I'm just a beer drinker and not a connoisseur.

My tastes are fairly simple when it comes to beer but the craft brew explosion in this area just about demands that you try them. Lady B is big into the craft brew thing and she knows some of the folks that are involved in some of the breweries. She works for NASA and some of the engineers/rocket scientists are involved in a couple of the breweries. From what I've sampled, they should stick to rocket fuel and stay away from beer. No offense, Jim.

In this area alone there are 8-10 breweries and w/o national distribution I don't know how they will sustain themselves. At the prices charged for many of these brews, I'll stick to PBR and save the money for better whiskey's.

One of the worst I've sampled is Monkeynaut.

Some of this has come up before in previous threads but I think @dh66 put it best when he said about Monkeynaut, "Miss Baker is turning over in her grave."

 

Recently while eating at a new BBQ shack I tried a bottled Lone Star beer that was popular when I was stationed in the Army at Ft. Polk in the early '70s. My gawd it was awful. How did I ever drink that stuff..??

Next I ordered a Boston lager on tap at local LongHorn Steak House. Immediately I could tell that the tall mug was some other kind of beer the flavor of Blue Moon (puke). Waiter replied ' oops sorry '. Usually I play it safe and order a Boston Lager or Winter Lager unless I see something darker listed. I do like Dos Equis Dark with certain foods.

A friend talked me into trying a PBR which I used to drink back in the '60s. For cripe sakes what did they do to that beer recipe..?? Ruined it.

 

I agree that some beers taste much better on tap than in bottles; and Sam Adams' Boston Lager definitely falls in that category. Interestingly, at least in my opinion, many American yellow fizzy water beers also fall within that category and become enjoyable, for what they are, on tap. But then again, paying bar prices for a cheap beer really defeats their whole purpose . . .

 

As noted above, the water beer is made with has a great deal to do with how it drinks. Because the majors have breweries all over the place, their beers end up tasting different. (even though they try their darnedest to standardize them). And then there are the contract brewers. For instance, back in the early '90s, Sam Adams was brewed at the Blitz-Weinhard Brewery in downtown Portland, Oregon. (Back before Miller/Coors closed it down.) It affects the micros as well. When I lived in Eugene, Oregon, there were 5 brew-pubs in town, (all within walking distance I might add), and one in Springfield across the freeway. The five in Eugene could count on the flavor and character of their beers being pretty consistent. The one in Springfield had a deuce of a time. One batch would be fine. The next would be 'off'. The reason for this was that Eugene's water supply came off the McKenzie River pretty far upstream. Springfield's water came from a variety of wells with each having their own character and Ph. What came out of the tap could change without notice.