BOSTON – Infinium, the limited-edition, champagne-like collaboration brew between Samuel Adams and Germany’s Weihenstephan Brewery, hits shelves just in time for the 2011 holiday season. The brewers have spent years perfecting this boundary-pushing new beer style that unites 1,000 years of combined knowledge and innovation between the two breweries. Initially launched in 2010, Infinium is the first completely new beer style created in more than 100 years to adhere to the rigorous standards of the German Reinheitsgebot purity law—which states that all beer must be brewed using only four ingredients: malt, hops, water and yeast.
The brewers are mixing things up with this year’s batch, offering beer lovers an unexpected element to the Infinium toasting experience. Samuel Adams tapped mixologist Jill Schulster of New York City restaurant JoeDoe to create three Infinium cocktail recipes—the Mr. Adams, Into the Woods, and Winter Rush —each infused with seasonal ingredients that pair perfectly with Infinium’s effervescent character.
Unlike any other beer, Infinium is light and dry, yet complex with a sparkling effervescence. The beer pours out a deep golden color with fine bubbles, and its acidity creates a dry tartness on the palate that is balanced with a smooth malt body. The brewers enhanced this year’s beer by dry hopping with fresh Hallertau Mittelfrueh hops late in the brewing process, imparting a fresh yet delicate citrusy hop character.Infinium’s fruity, elegant aroma makes the brew an ideal mixer with seasonal flavors like apple cider.
“We’ve spent years perfecting the recipe for Infinium. Combining revered German brewing traditions with American innovation, we rewrote the beer world’s rules,” said Jim Koch, Samuel Adams founder and brewer. “This beer is unlike anything else we’ve brewed so we thought, ‘Why not take the experiment one step further and develop beer cocktails to play off the flavors and enhance the experience for our drinkers?’ We found that the quality ingredients we use in our beer translate well, and the cocktails actually showcase Infinium’s flavors in a new and unexpected way.”
This crisp, vivacious brew is certain to make a palate-pleasing holiday gift for food and beer connoisseurs, and its light, sparkling character makes Infinium the ideal beverage for a celebratory holiday toast. Available at select locations worldwide for a limited time, Infinium hits shelves in late November for a suggested retail price of $19.99 per bottle. It is packaged in 750mL cork-finished bottles and contains 10.3 percent alcohol by volume, twice the amount of an average beer. For additional information and to locate a retailer, visit www.samueladams.com/Infinium.
INFINIUM BEER COCKTAIL RECIPES:
The Mr. Adams
Infinium
1 oz black pepper syrup (simple syrup combined with black pepper)
› oz apple cider
┬╝ oz fresh lemon juice
Garnish: Lemon peel
Glassware: Champagne flute, straight up
Fill glass halfway with Infinium. Shake black pepper syrup, cider and lemon juice in a shaker. Strain shaken mixture into glass. Garnish with lemon peel.
Into The Woods
Infinium
1 oz fresh lime juice
1 tsp fresh rosemary
1 pinch of grey salt
Garnish: Preserved lime and a rosemary sprig, grey salt rim
Glassware: Pilsner glass, on the rocks
Rim glass with grey salt using simple syrup. Muddle rosemary, lime juice and grey salt. Shake with ice and pour contents into rimmed glass. Top with Infinium. Stir gently, and garnish with lime and rosemary.
Winter Rush
Infinium
› oz pumpkin bitters (or orange bitters with pumpkin extract added)
Splash of lemon juice
1 tsp sage
┬╝ tsp smoked salt
Garnish: Crushed dehydrated cranberries for rim
Glassware: Pilsner glass, on the rocks
Rim glass with dehydrated cranberries using simple syrup. Muddle sage, salt and lemon juice. Shake with pumpkin bitters and ice. Pour contents into pilsner glass. Top with Infinium and stir gently.
ABOUT THE BOSTON BEER COMPANY:
The Boston Beer Company began in 1984 with a generations-old family recipe that Founder and Brewer Jim Koch uncovered in his father’s attic. Inspired and unafraid to challenge conventional thinking about beer, Jim brought the recipe to life in his kitchen. Pleased with the results of his work, Jim decided to sample his beer with bars in Boston in the hopes that drinkers would appreciate the complex, full-flavored beer he brewed fresh in America. That beer was aptly named Samuel Adams Boston Lager┬«, in recognition of one of our nation’s great founding fathers, a man of independent mind and spirit. Little did Jim know at the time, Samuel Adams Boston Lager soon became a catalyst of the American craft beer revolution.
Today, The Boston Beer Company brews more than 30 styles of beer. It relentlessly pursues the development of new styles and the perfection of classic beers by searching the world for the finest ingredients. Using the traditional four vessel brewing process, the Company often takes extra steps like dry-hopping, barrel-aging and a secondary fermentation known as krausening. The Company has also pioneered another revolution, the ‘extreme beer’ movement, where it seeks to challenge drinker’s perceptions of what beer can be. The Boston Beer Company has been committed to elevating the image of American craft beer by entering festivals and competitions around the globe, and in the past five years has won more awards in international beer competitions than any other brewery in the world. As an independent company, brewing quality beer remains its single focus. Although Samuel Adams┬« beer is America’s largest-selling craft beer, it accounts for only one percent of the U.S. beer market. Samuel Adams will continue its independently-minded quest to brew great beer and to advocate for the growth of craft beer across America. For more information, please visit www.samueladams.com.
ABOUT WEIHENSTEPHAN:
The Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan. Nearly one thousand years ago it was the monastery brewery of the Benedictine monks, then the Royal Bavarian State Brewery. Today, as a regulated enterprise of the Freestate of Bavaria, it is a company run according to the precepts of private business. As the oldest existing brewery in the world, the brewery occupies an exalted site atop Weihenstephan Hill in the Bavarian city of Freising, surrounded by the comparatively still very young Weihenstephan science centre of the Technical University of Munich. Yet it is precisely this unique combination of tradition and custom, proven knowledge, and modern science, which gives the brewery its incomparable identity and permits it to brew beers of the highest quality. www.weihenstephaner.de