While cool, blustery fall weather stirs longings for steaming cups of apple cider, beer lovers have a reason to drink to the season: fresh-hop beer, a libation that's as fleeting as it is delicate.
August and September signal harvest season for hops, the flower cones that provide beers' bitter flavors. Generally, plucked hops are dried and sent into storage, losing aromatic oils and resins in the process. But a small portion of fresh hops are hustled to breweries in a race against time -- like grass clippings, the hops quickly degrade and decompose.
"Our hops come in by truck, typically in the middle of the night, and we begin brewing within an hour of arrival," says Bill Manley, communications coordinator for Sierra Nevada. "We don't stop brewing until all of the hops are gone, 24 hours a day -- our kettles actually begin to warp toward the end of the week from the constant heat."
But the potential destruction is worth the payoff: Harvest Wet Hop Ale, now in its 13th year of altering drinkers' perception. "Wet-hopped beers can sometimes take a first-time drinker by surprise," Manley says.
If you're a big fan of Sierra Nevada Wheat, you might want to begin stocking up now...
Earlier in the week, I passed along information from a Sierra Nevada press release announcing the addition of a new year-round offering due later in 2009 called Sierra Nevada Kellerweis Hefeweizen, a German-style wheat beer. In that post, I stated: "My only question would be that...Sierra Nevada already has a wheat beer: The aptly named Sierra Nevada Wheat. Obviously wheat beers come in many different styles...but it'll be interesting to see how these co-exist."
Well, after speaking with a number of representatives from Sierra Nevada during Philly Beer Week, co-exist they will not. "Kellerweis will replace the Wheat," stated Assistant Brewmaster Terence Sullivan, which was later confirmed by one of the sales reps. Turns out Sierra Nevada Wheat, an American-style wheat beer, has seen slumping sales for quite some time now, and though the beer has been with the company since it's early days, they've decided its time to part way.
It's a sensible move: At the time of its conception, Wheat was one of the first of its kind, but the beer is a bit mild by today's standards. Kellerweis will have more of the bold flavors we've come to associate with a Sierra Nevada beer. And enthusiasm over the Kellerweis was running extremely high. "We can not wait for people to try this beer" was a regular refrain from the SN team. Send one my way, boys!
Hot on the heels of their Torpedo Extra IPA -- Sierra Nevada's first new year-round offering in over a decade -- the California brewery is doing it again, announcing the release of a second, new, year-round release launching in 2009 (which, in case you're counting, will bring the grand total of year-round releases to six).
A "polar opposite on the flavor spectrum" from the Torpedo IPA, this new selection has been branded Kellerweis Hefewizen -- "a traditional Bavarian Hefeweizen that we have been working on for a number of years." According to their press release, the product was originally developed after Sierra Nevada obtained a rare and unique yeast strain from a very small Bavarian brewery. However, it wasn't until a trip to Germany inspired the brewers to use open fermentation that the beer finally obtained the flavors they were seeking (and also inspired the name -- "keller" is German for cellar, the name breweries give to their fermentation systems).
Sierra Nevada states: "The flavor is rich with bready wheat notes and massive banana and clove... The finish is clean and crisp and the beer has a low enough ABV to be scarily session-able." Sounds like a winner to me. I am a huge wheat/white beer fan, especially those in the more drinkable spectrum. My only question would be that, as many may know, Sierra Nevada already has a wheat beer: The aptly named Sierra Nevada Wheat. Obviously wheat beers come in many different styles, and the Kellerweis Hefeweizen sounds distinctly different, but it'll be interesting to see how these co-exist. Just as the Torpedo IPA set itself apart from Sierra's long-standing Pale Ale, the Kellerweis will be tasked to do a similar job.
Sierra Nevada garnered a ton of press after announcing the forthcoming release of the first year-round addition to their brewing line-up in over a decade. I myself got caught up in the hype, but have been playing it cool waiting to give the beer a try. Part of launching a major new addition to your product line is availability, so half the fun was waiting to see when and where I would first find Torpedo Extra IPA available.
Well, last Friday, I was pleasantly surprised when my local corner store had a couple six-packs stashed in their back cooler. With an official launch date of "late January 2009", it took less than a month for Sierra Nevada's latest offering to make its way onto my block. Not too shabby -- I don't particularly live in a craft beer haven -- and definitely a testament to Sierra Nevada's distribution. For taste, Sierra Nevada is all craft, but on the availability side, Sierra Nevada has become almost as ubiquitous as the big boys.
Over the past 28 years, Sierra Nevada has stood as a formidable national alternative to the massive American macro-brewers. When they started in 1980, there was a dignified simplicity to providing just four basic year-round offerings -- Pale Ale, Porter, Wheat and Stout -- styles which have stood as pillars of the craft industry. But recently, simple has shifted towards quaint, and though Sierra Nevada has always offered a cadre of seasonal and limited selections, someone has seemingly decided it's time to up the ante and add a new addition to their previously untouched year-round core. Welcome Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA.
Torpedo Extra IPA instantly separates itself by name alone, sounding a bit flashier than its other yearlong brethren, as if an ad exec in a mesmerizing tie somehow managed to slip one by the old guard. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Frankly, I've always been on the fence about Sierra Nevada. Much props for making the microbrew market what it is today and all due respect to their Pale Ale which is trumped only by Sam Adams Boston Lager in the annals of craft beer history, but, for my tastes, Sierra Nevada brews have always seemed a bit standard -- a feeling that has only become accentuated as the craft market has deepened.
A great man -- MC Paul Barman -- once said of beer: "The liquid is ubiquitous and has such a hold; on all the strata, it's just got to be government-controlled. Behind the bottle and the throne sits an unknown man wiser and bigger for the liquor store the number one franchiser. Perhaps George Bush and his sons are relatives of Anheiser."
I'm not 100% sure what MC was talking about, but his gist is right: Sometimes you just feel like beer is everywhere. Television, sporting events, plastered on the side of a bus: It's seems like everyone wants us to be thinking beer. Which got me thinking, What beers do I encounter on an average day?
A far more accomplished lyricist -- John Lennon -- once wrote a song called "A Day in the Life," and from what I've heard Lennon liked to drink, so in his honor, here, after the jump, were my beer encounters on an average day... Tuesday.
Along with "organic" beers -- yesterday's topic du jour -- another phrase far more brewers have been throwing about recently is "wet hops."
Why wet? Well, the name is somewhat self-explanatory. Typically hops are dried before they are packed, shipped and stored to await the brewing process. Hops is a plant (the flower of a plant technically), and anyone who's ever forgotten a fern for too long knows plants become distinctly different when they're dead. The theory behind wet hops is that as soon as the flowers are picked oils, resins and flavors begin to dry up, so by going direct from the bine to the brew kettle, your hops will pack more punch.
The trick works -- beers brewed with wet hops hold more of their distinct flavors -- somewhat begging the question, Why doesn't everyone do it? Well, price is a factor. And unless your ale needs some serious hoppiness, a lot of that subtlety is going to be drowned in malts regardless. Also hop varietals can be pretty picky in where they will grow. But even when everything else works out, the schematics are a pain. Every hour those hops hang out, dryness sets in: They have to find their way to the brewery in a hurry. So brewers looking to use wet hops need a field nearby and the dedicated manpower to make it happen.
After the jump, hear about an accessible example of a beer brewed with wet hops: Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale.
It's time for autumn, so that must mean it's...Miller Time?
Well, sure, you could go for any one of your usual six-packs off the grocery store shelf, but according to beer buff Stan Hieronymous, author of "Brew Like a Monk" and the editor of Realbeer.com, autumn is the time to drink outside the box, when brewers offer limited edition "seasonal" brews. He selects a few favorites:
For those of you swooning over Nicole's recent post about kitchen bling,
maybe you can do a bit of penance here with this Pope John Paul II bottle opener ... a.k.a. "The
Popener."
When my old roommate came back from a bit of work in Rome, she brought me a John Paul II bottle opener, straight
from the Vatican. At the time, I was not happy. What kind of girlfriend brings a bottle opener back from Italy?
While I would have preferred something I could wear or eat or sell at a vast profit on eBay, I came
to love this bottle opener with time. Every Sierra Nevada I
cracked after a long day at the office became holy. Every Brooklyn Brown Ale became the equivalent of
20 "Hail Marys."
If you want one, you had better get cracking. While they're currently on sale at romegiftshop.com for $14.99 (free St. Peter postcard included!),
can a Pope Benedict XVI bottle opener be that far off?
If you're a big fan of Sierra Nevada Wheat, you might want to begin stocking up now...
Sierra Nevada garnered a ton of press after announcing the forthcoming release of the first year-round addition to their brewing line-up in over a decade. 
Along with "organic" beers -- yesterday's topic du jour -- another phrase far more brewers have been throwing about recently is "wet hops."
It's time for autumn, so that must mean it's...Miller Time?
For those of you swooning over Nicole's recent 
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