Beer: PB & Jams
Brewery: Abita Brewing Company (Abita Springs, LA)
Style: Lager – American
8% ABV / 20 IBU
There will be people on both sides of this debate, lining up to argue whether you should slug this straight from the bottle or whether you should pour it into a glass. They’ll argue whether it is best experienced ice-cold like a cut-rate American lager or warmed to room temperature like a proper pub draft, blind to the fact that both ways are meant to mask the sadness of our meaningless existence. They’ll argue about whether this is straight ruling or totally sucks, because there’s absolutely no way to brew a peanut butter and jelly flavored beer without it being completely polarizing, so whatever side you pick boils down to whether you fancy a PB&J and whether you can stomach that in your beer.
Credit Abita for rocketing forth into largely uncharted territory. There are a lot of peanut butter-themed beers—Belching Beaver’s Peanut Butter Milk Stout, DuClaw’s Sweet Baby Jesus, and about a million others—but no one saw a peanut butter and jelly themed lager coming. And not just a lager but an 8% booze-bomb that more or less qualifies as an imperial, a bold choice for a brewery that made its mark with easier-drinking styles to beat the Louisiana heat, you better think twice about going too deep into a six-pack of PB & Jams, because it’s a one-way ticket to hangover city. Make like Bobby Liebling and be forewarned!
As for how it stacks up as a peanut butter and jelly beer, we’re neither in the “love” or “loathe” camps. It’s pretty… okay. The nose is super-mellow, with a little bit of creamy peanut butter and stronger hints of butterscotch. The peanut butter flavor is strongest at first sip and slowly becomes stronger as it reaches room temperature; the jamminess and berry flavor is all in the finish. The flavor is in line with a lot of stunt beers and definitely gets less fun the deeper you get into the six-pack. But it also sports a pretty clean finish for a beer featuring extracts, so it’s a welcome reprieve from the onslaught of pastry stouts and smoothie sours. Tastes fine, less filling, or something like that.
For more info on Abita Brewing Company, please head here.
