Shiner Celebrates 108 Years with Cold Brew Coffee Ale

For a business to reach its 108 birthday requires perseverance and nowhere is this truer than in America’s brewing industry. Faced with excessive regulations, taxes, and other obstacles, a brewery is lucky to survive for even a decade, much less a century. But Texas- based Spoetzl Brewing, maker of all things Shiner, has survived and thrived and just recently released a new beer in celebration of its 108 years in business. The beer is Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale, a smooth collaboration brew for coffee lovers.

Seeing and Tasting

Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale pours to a dark brown hue with an aroma of coffee and a flavor that follows. Coffee dominates the taste, but there are some other flavors lurking in the background, like roasted malt, caramel, chocolate, and a touch of vanilla. The beer is sweeter than others of its style, but not excessively so, and finishes with very little bitterness.

This coffee ale features a lager smoothness that may catch some beer drinkers by surprise. The hops remain subdued, for the most part, and the taste of cold brew coffee stays with you from start to finish. Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale contains 5 percent alcohol by volume and a scant 15 IBU of bitterness.

It’s the Real Thing

Shiner products are often found in the craft beer section of most stores but as most craft beer lovers will agree, Shiner beers often lack the “umph” necessary to satisfy the craft beer aficionados among us. Given a wide open selection of beers, few of us will go with Shiner, preferring instead to overwhelm our taste buds with the excesses so common among today’s craft beer entries.

Shiner has been brewing special birthday beers for a few years running and I have noticed that each of these special occasion beers is usually better than the average Shiner brew. This was certainly the case with past birthday beers Shiner Chocolate Stout and Shiner Hoppy Pilsner and it’s true once again with Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale. I love coffee ales and what I like about this one is that it refrains from lurking into the bitter and/or alcoholic depths like other coffee beers. Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale plays it cool, delivering a beer that tastes very much like a glass of cold brew coffee without the excesses so common to other coffee stouts and porters.

Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale maintains an authentic coffee taste and this is due in no small part to the collaboration with Chameleon Cold Brew, an organic cold brew coffee producer based out of Austin, TX. You don’t get artificial flavors with this Shiner brew like is sometimes the case with other coffee beer. Chameleon is a master at its craft and I like that Shiner decided to partner with one of the best in its class to create a coffee- inspired beer.

108 Years and Going Strong

Shiner’s birthday beers are a notch better than other Shiner beers and Shiner Cold Brew Coffee Ale continues this trend. The beer is sold in 12 oz. bottles, 12 oz. cans, 24 oz. bottles and on draft, but only while supplies last. It’s a great tribute to a company seeped in Texas history and a beer I recommend seeking out as we celebrate 108 years of Spoetzl brewing.

 

Rating: 8 Cheers out of 10