I bought this beer over the weekend at Wegmans and I can’t tell you how crushed I was last night when I realized the bottle was empty and I had only bought one.  The beer is just delicious and hard to beat.

I bought the beer in a 550 ml bottle and poured it into a pint glass.  It seemed pretty thick when I poured it, it’s a very dark brown and had an impressive, light brown head.

It didn’t have much of an aroma.  You could tell that you were smelling beer but smelling the beer didn’t give me much of an indication on what I was about to drink.  That could just have been my unpracticed nose.  The aroma that was there was pleasant, just not very strong.

The beer was very smooth, the first sip went down very easy.  It had a nice mouth feel but I felt like there was a coating of beer left in my mouth, sticking to my tongue, after I swallowed.   It tasted wonderful so I am not complaining that it lingered but it was a bit of a different mouth feel for me.

The beer has a very malty flavor with a nice hint of dark chocolate and lesser hint of coffee.  There was a bitterness but I didn’t get much of a hop flavor.  It had a pretty dry finish which I enjoy, makes you want to take another swallow.

I am partial to stouts but so far, I have to call this the best year I have had so far.  My year of beer just started less than a month ago but damn, what an excellent start. I will be drinking a lot more of this beer, I can promise the good folks at Samuel Smith that!

Well, today, my wife turned this doubting Thomas into a believer.  There is a Wegmans just a few minutes away from Victory Brewing company which we just toured yesterday  (read my Victory Brewing Company Tour blog post).  Not only is it truly a fantastic grocery store they have an awesome take out beer section.  Pennsylvania has some wacky liqour and beer laws, one of them is that Beer is only available from a beer distributor where you have to buy it by the case or from a bar/restaurant where you can get it by the 6 pack.  Most bars have the standard crappy selection of 6 packs and they are overpriced.   Wegmans, on the other hand, has a cafe that they setup in their grocery store and in that cafe is a very impressive craft beer takeout section.   They had a very tiny little corner of the beer section that had a few cases of the large commercial beers.  The vast majority of the beer was from microbreweries across the United States and tons of great International beers.  They even have single bottles that you are allowed to buy which I thought was illegal in PA.

We had already spent more money that we had budgeted on our beer and lunch session at Victory Brewing Company so I didn’t want to spend a lot.  I got a few beers but now that I know where to go to get more, I am sure we will be making more frequent grocery trips to Wegmans.

I picked up:

• 1 750 ml bottle of Ommegang Abbey Ale
• 1 500 ml bottle of Samuel Smith Tadcaster
• And 1 355 ml bottle of Lindemans Framboise Lambic

I have never had any of these beers before so I am excited to try them.  In fact, I have never had a Lambic from any brewery but have heard some really interesting things about them so I am looking forward to trying it.