Samuel Adams Triple Bock
Review Date 10/26/2000 By John Staradumsky
Triple Bock is not
your average beer. You’ll realize this when you first glance at the elegant
cobalt blue bottle embossed with “Sam Adams Triple Bock” in gold print. Then
you’ll see the price: $4.75 or so for an 8.75 ounce bottle. No, this is
certainly not your average beer. Intrigued, you buy a bottle and take it
home.
To get at your Triple Bock, you must first peel away the black plastic
shrink-wrap that holds the cruet-capped cork in place. From there it’s an
easy pull to extract the cork, and the beer can then be decanted into a
glass. I prefer a small stemmed pilsner glass for my Triple bock. It should
be drunk at room temperature. OK, enough waiting. You pour it. The beer
itself is deep black in color with absolutely no carbonation. It is
completely flat. The nose is rich and strong with notes of prune and port.
The palate is rich and sweet, cloying, liqueur-like. Notes of chocolate are
apparent. Maple syrup and vanilla too. The finish is the real story here,
however. It’s incredibly warming with alcohol, probably more so than any
beer you have ever tasted.
There’s a good reason for this. Samuel Adams Triple Bock weighs in at a
whopping (drumroll please) seventeen and one half percent by volume.
Now you know why it comes in small bottles. At that strength, Triple Bock is
one of the most potent beers on Earth, and pushes the envelope as to what
beer can be. The average lager is about five percent alcohol by volume,
Triple Bock is more than three times as alcoholic. You may not want to drink
the entire bottle in one sitting. That’s fine though, since the cork can be
replaced on the bottle. The beer will keep at room temperature even after
opening due to the high alcohol content.
So what is a Triple Bock? It’s not a bock at all, actually. Boston Beer
wanted to denote strength in the brew, and to create a new style. Bock,
double bock, and eisbock grow stronger in the order I listed them. Triple
Bock is stronger still. Brewed with four times as much malt as the flagship
Boston Lager, Triple Bock also uses maple syrup as an ingredient (a rich
source of fermentable sugars). The beer is top fermented like an ale and
aged in whiskey barrels for six months. Prior to fermentation the brew has
an amazing original gravity of about 1.7.
Triple Bock was introduced in 1991, and I can remember how difficult it was
to obtain at first. Everyone wanted to try it. To this day, I can recall a
beer festival I attended in the mid nineties at which beer lovers surrounded
the Boston Beer booth and chanted, “TRIPLE BOCK! TRIPLE BOCK!” until some of
that magical elixir was produced and decanted into their tasting glasses.
Today, the mystique surrounding Triple Bock has died down a bit. Most people
either love it or hate it. I happen to love it, especially by a roaring fire
on a cold winter evening. It may not fit into the traditional notion of what
beer is, but it’s a wonderful treat all the same.
Glad I tried it? T
Would I rebuy it??
*Pricing data accurate at time of review or latest update. For reference only, based on actual price paid by reviewer.
(B)=Bottled, Canned
(D)=Draft