Sam Adams makes a few pretty gross beers. The thing that's good about them is that their selection is made up of mostly non-offensive beers....so if you're buying beer for a bunch of people, it will probably work out ok. That cherry wheat tastes like Ludens cough drops. Yuck. Also, they make a fake lambic and a heavily spiced beer that they sell around Christmas and those are even worse. Their specialty stuff like triple bock and utopias are just plain horrible. I can understand that they want to have the record for the strongest beer, but it should at least resemble beer! Utopias tastes like cognac mixed with ass in a bottle and you have to pay $100 a bottle for it. Triple Bock is just plain nasty too. Their IPA was so weak in the knees it tasted like a watered down pale ale (I think they discontinued that one). I still respect the company for what it's done but you won't find me buying much of their stuff.
Pete's is probably even worse though. Pete's used to be a microbrewery way back when. They had a pretty good following and they stuck to making just a few different beers that were so/so. They got bought out by Gambrinus corp. The quality of the beer plummeted of course and now you have....well....more mediocre beers to choose from.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather drink either of those instead of a Budweiser any day but they are nothing special at all. Sam Adams and Pete's are good beers to introduce people to microbrews. If they see something they like in them, they will most likely be willing to try other microbrews as well.
Many years ago when those companies first tried to market their beer on a large scale, they found that a lot of people (especially women) didn't care for the taste of it. Well, it wasn't really that they were making crappy beer, they just found out that many people didn't care for the strong flavor of beer. So what did they do? They replaced a lot of the barley with rice (a lot used corn instead of rice). The rice and/or corn gave the beer the alcohol content but almost no flavor. They also cut down on the hops significantly. That is what made them what they are today.....beer for people who don't really like beer. Also, "beechwood aging" is totally phony. Beechwood has very little flavor to it (and they remove what flavor it has left before adding it by boiling it in water and baking soda). They use the beechwood to aid in fining the beer, not add flavor to it.
Sorry to go on and on. As a former brewer (for a microbrewery) and a homebrewer for many years, I guess you could say that I'm pretty into it.
