Samuel Adams is crap. Most of their beer is contract brewed. Large breweries that have excess brewing capacity because they can't sell as much of their own beer as they would like are hired by Samuel Adams to cut down on their brewing costs and distribution costs. These breweries don't give a crap about Samuel Adams products, which is why most of the time, Samuel Adams beers have strange off flavors. The contract brewers are just doing it for the money or to keep their crappy brewery from going under. And, as for Shiner, replacing barley with corn Syrup or corn sugar creates a nasty hangover. That's what happens when marketing companies (Gambrinus) buy breweries as happened with Shiner in 1989. More billboards, more ads, higer sales, lower quality. Stay away from that stuff and you'll feel much better in the morning.
Yes, Sam contract brews most of their stuff, becuase they don't have the capacity to brew their own. Visiting breweries is a (relatively new) hobby of mine, and I've been fortunate enough to run into a few CEOs of the smaller beer companies. Ask any of them and they will tell you that Bud and Miller have the best breweries in the world, because a brewery is all about consistency. Bud and Miller beers taste like water because that's what they want it to taste like. Those are the best facilities to use and they do it.
I get the feeling all that this thread is turning into a backlash against Shiner. Nationwide Shiner obviously isn't as good as when it was just a local brew but for a nationwide beer its good and I would put it above things like Henry Weinhardt and most of the Sam Adams. So its not the greatest beer ever but from this thread you would think it was Coors.
