Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Grade: B

Part one of a three part series of beers brewed in partnership between Sierra Nevada Brewing and New Clairvaux, an actual honest-to-god monastery in California. Ken Grossman, the owner of Sierra Nevada is extremely interested in traditional abbey ales, brewed with the seasons. It's a bold departure from the brewery's obvious strength, hoppy American ales.

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I wrote not to long ago about a vertical tasting I did of Sierra Nevada's Celebration, and came to the conclusion that just because a beer has the same label year to year, doesn't mean what's in the bottle is the same year to year. Building off of this idea, I reached into my cellar and brought a few bottles of Bigfoot into the light. Granted, this is one of my favorite beers from one of my favorite breweries. One might think this makes me biased, and I'd have to admit that I am. However just because I've already passed judgment on this beer and found it outstanding, there still is much to learn about how beer develops over time, and the role hops and malt play in that development.

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Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Grade: A-

A big shout-out and thanks to my friends at Sonoma Wines and Spirits for hooking me up with this lovely little bottle. It's rare to find people who strive to be purveyors of fine beer, and approach it with such zeal. I am very lucky to have local business owners who care as much as I do about a simple little thing like beer. Be sure to check out their blog at The Cork Stops Here for some well written reviews of all things fermented.

Ok, let's just begin with the fact that I want the label of this beer blown up poster-size and hung on my wall. That aside, the buzz around this beer puts it dangerously close to the "hype beer" status. Limited in quantity, sought after by geeks of all backgrounds, and from a brewery known to deliver on excellence in the hop department. All these things together make for a lot of media (ok, blogger) attention, which tends to inflate expectations. I purposely wanted to avoid that so it didn't influence my delicate palate. I failed miserably. But in the interest of journalistic integrity, I forced myself to erase the memories of others reactions and form my own opinions. Had I known exactly how strong this beer was, I could have just had a bottle and erased all the memories I wanted.

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Well, with the year coming to a close and everyone posting about the special beers they popped on New Years, I figured I'd throw my hat into the ring. While I didn't have anything insanely rare (well, there was that bottle of Utopias that was going around), I did bring out a few bottles of Sierra Nevada Celebration that I had been saving each year since 2008. I've had vintage Sierra Nevada Bigfoot barleywine before, but I wanted to try their other famous seasonal with some age on it, and I was a bit surprised by what I found.

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Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Grade: A

Estate is one of Sierra Nevada's annual releases, using the newly certified organic hops (and now barley) that they grew themselves on their own farmland. This beer, from beginning to end, was made by the brewers. Winemakers have long appreciated the idea of regional impact when it comes to ingredients. Cabernet grapes grown in France are not the same as Cabernet grapes grown in California. In the brewing world the ingredients all come from maltsters and commercial hop growers, sometimes from many regions. Therefore one brewing company may be using the exact same ingredients as the next one. Up until now the only way to differentiate between breweries was based on how they put those same ingredients together. Sierra Nevada has decided to do everything themselves, from growing barley from seed to harvesting their own hops. That means that the contents of this bottle are unique, and not reproducible anywhere else other than the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, California.

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Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Grade: B

An Autumn beer? In August?

I guess in retrospect the transition from summer to fall is a quick one after all. In the span of a month or so the weather turns from sweltering to chilly and the beers go from pilsners to porters. Still, it's a little unusual to walk in to your local store in flip flops and pick up a beer with Autumn leaves all over it.

Tumbler is the replacement for the Anniversary Ale, which wasn't a failure of a beer, but was simply too similar to the much beloved Celebration Ale that came out right after it. To mix up the seasonal lineup, Sierra departed from their comfort zone of hoppy pale ales and went down a decidedly more malty path. 

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Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Grade: A

The first in Sierra Nevada's 30th Anniversary series, Fritz and Ken's Ale is a rich, dark stout bottled in caged and corked limited edition 750ml bottles.Yours truly has acquired two of these unique beers, one to try now for all you adoring readers, and another to stow away in some dark, dank cellar to try again in the future (hopefully the distant future, if my willpower allows). Why call this beer Fritz and Ken? Read on.

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Grade: A-
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

Sierra Nevada is another brewery who isn’t afraid to change something when it’s not working. The beer that held the previous Spring seasonal spot, the ESB (Early Spring Beer, and yes, I think it was a cop-out too), just wasn’t up to Sierra Nevada standards. An obvious weak spot, the brewery decided to swap it out with a tried and true recipe from the olden German brewing days, a golden bock. While not exactly what beer snobs might call a traditional “bock,” Glissade is certainly an easy drinkin,’ balanced brew, and I for one am damn glad they made the change.

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Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada, Life and Limb

Life and Limb, and its little brother Limb and Life are two beers cut from the same barley. Termed a partigyle, these beers are made from the same ingredients, but are as different as can be. Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head collaborated to make this unique offering, the details of which can be found at the Limb and Life website (yes, it has its own website). Eli Cannon’s in Middletown offered a side by side tasting of the beers, and I was eager to see what they were like, head to head. Sierra Nevada is one of my absolute favorite breweries, and Dogfish Head is one of my least. Will the joining of the two be greater than the sum of its parts? Or will the best of the best mixed with the worst of the worst merely end up in mediocrity?

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Grade: B-
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

An offwhite head tops a crystal clear golden/copper ale. Fresh cut grass, herbs, citrus, and earth mingle in the aroma. Slightly vegetal, sulfuric offnotes in the nose. Mouthfeel is medium light, slipping past the tongue quickly and leaving only a slight bitterness on the back of the palate. The flavor echoes those herbal, vegetal characters from the aroma. The bitterness is present, playing a strong role in the progression of this beer from beginning to end. Some citrus, lemon, and lime elements come through from the hops. I can't shake that grassy, vegetal feeling however, and I know it comes from using fresh picked whole hops. The malts are here, but as in most Sierra Nevada beers, take a definitive backseat to the driving force of the hops.

Wet hop beers are made with fresh hops that aren't dried, but are added to the brew kettle almost immediately after being harvested. These types of beers are obviously only produced once a year when the harvest comes around. The hops themselves are still 70% to 80% water at that point, which means that significantly more 'wet' hops are needed to impart hoppy flavor to a beer versus dried hops. Hops are essentially leaves, and they carry with them the resinous and grasslike flavors that fresh cut plants have. If you use a lot of them in a brew, they will not only give you that bitterness you're looking for, but a lot of vegetal flavors as well.

It seems that most wet hop beers, while rare and sought after, all have that same offputting plant-like quality. Personally I find that beers made with dry hops offer the brewer much more control and much more consistency. After all, we want to taste the hops as they exist in the beer, not as they existed on the vine. No one eats wine grapes from the vineyard. Instead they're harvested and changed in the winemaking process to yield flavors that hearken to the grape as it was on the vine, yet is a unique flavor that only exists in the glass. I feel the same way about hops; only when they are dried and concentrated to their purest essence do they truly show their uniqueness.