Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's 2009 Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale

Sweet. One of the best things about being serious about the beers you buy is paying attention over the course of months or years and knowing that when certain new ones pop up you should be pretty damn excited about it. This one is no exception, and this is one of the ones that got me to try SN again years after having tried SNPA and not being impressed with it. Those were my unwashed days of drinking almost exclusively Jack Daniels though, and Shiner was the only "different" beer I knew. And SN is now one of my favorite breweries.

Pours a deep, almost coppery amber with a great pillowy light tan head that's as big as you want it to be when you pour. Bubbles rise fairly slowly, telling me it's got some body to it.

Crisp, zingy hops smell. Not too much though. The hops are a big part of why they brewed this beer, but they're not over the top. Good bready and sweet malt smell as well.

Great beer. Solid hops that are well balanced bt prominent. It's not the usual grassy bitterness that hits and fades. It's deeper, more substantial, than that. The bitterness hits you across the back of the tongue and stays there. It's a deeper bitterness, more dull but at the same time still very crisp. Has to be the fact that the hops are so newly picked.

At under 7% ABV, this is a perfect example of how a good brewery can make a great beer without pumping up the ABV so high that you can only drink one. They focus on the taste, without sacrificing or trying to artificially hide anything. Again, great beer. Just like I remember the '07 and '08 being.