Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's Sierra 30th Anniversary Fritz and Ken's Ale

I like this one already. This is my favorite brewery that knows how to stay close to home despite selling a ton of beer (I'm looking at you, Sam Adams). The second I popped the cork I could already smell it.

Pours opaque and black with a great, small celled dark tan head that is as big as you want to pour it.

Nice, mellow roasted smell. Not really coffee, more like a slight bit of cocoa.

Pretty much perfect. Nice and smooth, it has the body of a heavy milk stout without the lactose taste. Still the hint of cocoa, and not a hint of the 9.2% ABV. Which, by the way, is exactly how to do it. All of the chumps at BrewDog could really learn from this beer. Stop following Stone (they're not worth copying, anyway), and start making great beers that focus more on being beer than a pissing contest. Just like this one.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's Glissade Golden Bock

I don't know why, but I've never seen this before. So, great surprise to see a new one, for me anyway, from my favorite quasi-macro brewery. I'm not real sure about a golden bock, but if anyone is going to do it right, they will.

Pours clear and golden, with a light, almost white head that is as big as you want to pour it. Slowly recedes, due to good carbonation.

Great malty smell. Crisp and clean, with no real floral or other smells that would indicate that it's hoppy, but not really overly bready either.

You know, it's only really bock-like in the aftertaste. It feels heavier than many beers, and the hops are low, so I can see why it would be a bock in style by the numbers, but it's just a bit cardboardy in bitterness and taste.

I don't know, I wish I didn't have 11 more of them now. Probably my least favorite Sierra Nevada beer.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's 13th Release Harvest Wet Hop Ale

I love it when the SN seasonals roll around at the end of the year, and had to grab this one. The douchebags at BeerAdvocate are calling this one a pale ale, but I guess they just haven't tried it yet or something. Not even Stone or Victory would try to pass this one off as one of their craptastic pales, as over-hopped as all of their beers are. It's every bit an IPA.

Pours a clear, bright copper color with decent carbonation and a huge head with tiny cells that never goes away.

Crisp, but still malty, smell. Lots of aromatics are thrown off by the huge head, adn you can smell the sharp grassy hops almost from across the room.

Great taste. Better (and much cheaper) than their Estate series, it has a big grassy hops punch right up front with a great feel and body. Smooth going down, with the carbonation keeping the big malt lighter than it would otherwise be. Not sweet or bready, the malt just lends to the feel more than anything else so as not to interfere with the hops, which keeps it crisp.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's 2009 Estate Brewer's Harvest Ale

Sweet, a new round of seasonals from Sierra Nevada. Always a must-buy.

This one pours amber with a copper tint, and as always a great tan head that sticks forever. Decent carbonation.

Malty. You can also smell the hops, but the malt is the most apparent.

Solid, bitter punch to it. The body is a little lighter than I expected, but it's still fairly big. It's an IPA, after all, not a barleywine. A little twangy to go with the bitterness, and fairly sweet malt. The hops are somewhere between grassy and piney. Bitterness lasts, and gets less sweet quickly.

I like it, but it's not their best seasonal. It's within the style but I wish it had more body.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's Kellerweis Hefeweizen

I don’t want to dislike a Sierra Nevada beer, but this may be the first. I’m hating the European type wheats lately, but feel compelled to buy every beer from my favorite breweries. This complete lack of discretion is a bad combination at times, and I’m hoping this isn’t one of them.

Pours an unfiltered and cloudy golden. Great light tan head, decent carbonation. Huge pile of yeast on the bottom of the bottle.

Wow, I think only one other time in hundreds of beers have I ever said that a beer smelled like bananas. In fact, I fairly ridicule other reviewers who use it at the drop of a hat. But this one smells like a fruit basket. It’s a bit floral, but the banana smell was huge. Like the cheap cologne a gorilla would wear. As it warms it fades to the standard chemical smell that European wheats often have.

Cleaner than I thought. Most beers that other describe as having banana and cloves (it always seems to be both banana and cloves, never just bananas or cloves, for some reason) I describe as have a chemical, plastic, or burned plastic taste. The banana smell mellows in the taste. Still no cloves though. It doesn’t really have a chemical or plastic taste, but I’m just not wild about the style. Good bready aftertaste, but it’s still tinged with that odd European wheat taste.

Well, I won’t go so far as to say I don’t like it, or so far to say I do. It’s definitely my least favorite Sierra Nevada offering and will be giving away the other five, but I don’t regret having bought it. Too badly, anyway.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's 2008 Celebration Ale

Alright, with all of the Sn beers lately, I decided to drag out last season's Celebration. Another AIPA sounded like a good thing.

Pours deeper than Anniversary, but still a deep amber. The color difference is probably due to the dry hopping, and it seems to be unfiltered, or at least loosely filtered. The head is a little smaller than it probably used to be because it's aging a little bit.

Good grassy smell. Not sweet this time, this one seems to lean more toward the hoppy side.

Yep, it's a little older and the hops has lost some of its initial pop. Solid bitterness despite that though, good body and decent malt backbone that isn't really grainy or bready, but keeps the body fairly solid. Many holiday ales are spiced in some way, but this one accomplishes what it wants with dry hopping. Slightly peppery and zippy, without anything added that shouldn't be there.

Great beer. Can't wait for this year's.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's 2009 Anniversary Ale

At first glance, this one seems indistinguishable from their Harvest Ale from yesterday's post. I guess it's not quite as coppery, and maybe the head is a hair lighter. Still, it's a solid amber and the head, like the Harvest Ale, is as big as you want to pour it.

Also similar in the smell to Harvest, except if you stay with it you get a nice piney hops smell. Very sweet malt as well. Right on style for an AIPA, a specialty of this brewery.

Strong bitterness that has pine overtones, with a slight citrus zing that makes it crisp, but also has a substantial and more dull bitterness underneath. The malt is very subdued in the taste compared to the smell. The body is there, but the sweetness is taken over by the hops. I wouldn't say overpowered, but it's clearly a hop-forward IPA.

Very good beer. One of the best IPA's out there, it's plenty hoppy but knows its place below barley wines. Always glad to see this one roll through Houston.

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.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's Stout

Stout. Says it all, right? Not Torpedo, or some other goofy name. Stout.

Pours deeper than most straight-up stouts. Not heavier in body really, but definitely more opaque. Great roasted malt smell. Definitely more substance to it than most stouts. Slight but not insignificant hops zing to it.
Perfect for a stout. Not really a roasted coffee or chocolate taste, just roasted malt and a solid bitterness that's not grassy or piney, it just let's you know it's there.

Every time I drink something from Sierra Nevada I can't help but think that this is everything BBC wishes it could be.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's Torpedo Extra IPA

Sierra Nevada is without a doubt the best quasi-macro brewery out there. This is what Sam Adams can never be, but BBC fanboys claim it is. They don't even come close. And if anyone from SN reads this (I know they won') dont take the quasi-macro thing the wrong way. You've maintained your quality hile increasing production. You haven't pandered to the mass market by dumbing down your beers, which BBC has done shamelessly, while promoting themselves as craft the whole time. I'm far more offended by ther commercials than anyting BMC ever put out. So I was glad to see this one finally hit my local store after I got back from vacation.

Pours like a big amber. Deep orangish amber color with a great light tan head that thins a bit but stays with decent carbonation. Great grassy hops smell, backed by solid bready malt. This is what an IPA is supposed to smell like, and in testament to the "extra" part, it actually smells pretty close to some barley wines.

Dang. This one grabs you. You can taste the bitterness even in the roof of your mouth. Perfect feel to it, substantial and smooth. After you adjust to it, the bitterness gives way to a sweet malt that gives it its body. Solid, grassy, excellent bitterness.

Eh, I don't like the name, but everything else about this beer is right where it should be. You know the other brewers are pissed that they put out an IIPA. I can't wait to see if they come out with an RIS. It'll be Code Brown for other brewers, as SN will make an even bigger dent in BMC and the micro market.

Good stuff.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's Unfiltered Wheat

I'm liking this brewery more and more. Unlike Sam Adams or New Belgium, Sierra Nevada has grown without compromise.

Their Unfiltered Wheat seems to be no exception. Pours a cloudy yellow with a great head and retention, especially for a wheat, and strong carbonation that will probably make it feel more crisp.

Great zippy smell that a wheat should have. Not really bitter, and not really bready, but kind of raw and grainy, a bit coarse but still light.

Excellent beer, just what the style calls for. An almost tart bitterness hits at first, followed by the grainy wheat and overall a crisp, zippy feel and taste that is substantial, but still fairly light like the style should be.

One of my favorite wheats. Crisp and clean, with good body and flavor, one of the strongest wheats out there while staying light.

Sierra Nevada's 2009 Bigfoot Barleywine

This was the first barley wine I ever had. Well, not this year's, but in previous years. And I have to admit, I have yet to find another one that I like as much. Old Foghorn is too sweet. Old Ruffian is a bit more raw. Divine Reserve 6? Blech.

Bigfoot pours a solid coppery amber with a great tan head that throws off a huge bready and hoppy smell as the head thins. Slightly sweet smelling simply because of the huge malt, but every aspect of this beer is balanced.

Great hoppy bitterness hits you right up front, followed by the sweet wheat bread malty flavor. Alcohol is basically imperceptable, which is saying something for a beer that has 9.6% ABV.

Big beer flavor with great balance and flavor. One of the standards for the style.

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company's Porter

Bill Clinton once said that there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America. And to me, Sierra Nevada exemplifies what's right with America. It's a solid company with big beers that is successful enough to reach macro status in capacity while not dumbing down their recipes to reach the masses (I'm looking at you, Sam Adams), or having to get there by means of advertising because taste and quality aren't enough on their own (still looking at you).

Everything is streamlined, and simple. Good, solid beers in recognizable, unique labels, and not a bum in the bunch. So tonight's Sierra Nevada Porter is a guaranteed good beer.

It pours an opaque black with amber to red highlights and a thick tan head that gets pillowy and very slowly fades. Difficult to tell what the carbonation is by sight, but it supports a good sized head for some time.

Smells almost like a stout because it's a bit grainy, but it's more rich than a stout, a little deeper. Slight hops, a bit sweet, and molasses that puts it solidly in the porter style. Very slightly vinous as it warms, and low carbonation keeps it smooth and buttery in the feel.

Very good porter, and just one more example of how a beer should be even if your company grows bigger than you thought it ever would (Sam...).