Review: Abita Amber
I’m on a beer kick right now. I have no choice: The stairs going down to my wine cellar are being sealed. “Wet paint” for the rest of the week.
With some pad thai tonight I broke out an Abita Amber, which I bought a sixer of a couple of weeks back. It went well with the dish. It’s a nice brew on the whole. I have had the Louisiana beer only once previously, on a trip to New Orleans, about a month before Katrina’s wallop at a party at Paul Prudhomme’s fine establishment, K-Paul’s.
An amber lager (“Munich style,” the company says), Abita has a traditional maltiness but backs that up with a sweeter underbelly than most amber beers. Abita calls it “caramel,” and I can get that… but only deep in the aftertaste. The initial sweetness is more like a honey. That matched well with the semi-sweetness of my pad thai sauce, though a more bitter brew would probably have worked just as well.
Obviously they like it spicy in New Orleans, and a little sweetness helps there, too, to cut the heat. If you see it locally, grab a six-pack and give it a spin next time you’re eating something a little too hot for vino.
flexoffers
4% abv.
A- / $8 per six-pack / abita.com
Abita Amber
$8
