Little and large

We had a jolly time of it one Thursday night in early December. Sierra Nevada's co-founder, Steve Grossman, was in town, prompting a night of revelry and €5 pints at UnderDog.

One of such was Oktoberfest, last year's vintage having been brewed in collaboration with Kehrwieder of Hamburg. As such, then, there's a northern influence, meaning less Bavarian softness and more of a hop bite. Not that there isn't a huge malt component: this is very bready, with an overall chewy and wholesome feel. The hops manifest as a selection of leafy vegetables, particularly celery, spinach and rocket. While it's very definitely a Festbier, it does shade into pale bock to an extent, with all that noble hop character. A little unwelcome caramel emerges as it warms, so I was glad to be dealing with only a pint rather than a litre. It still absolutely hit the mark, however, providing just what an Oktoberfest beer ought to, in a way that non-Bavarian breweries rarely get just right.

Later, a special bottle of Brux was opened. This is a collaboration with fellow Californian brewing legends Russian River and is a "domesticated" wild ale. From the name it's apparent that Brettanomyces is its signature feature. I thought it was quite understated, which is unusual because Russian River in particular likes to go properly wild with its wild beers. Here, I got an aroma of subtle rosemary and basil, followed by a flavour of Sauternes grape and breadcrust. An extra perfume and resin effect emerges as it warms, alongside a lightly earthy mushroom funk. It's good, I guess, but it's not as fun and interesting as the best of these, holding back on going full-tilt with the Brett. I enjoyed it, for free, but would have resented paying top dollar for a beer that doesn't offer as much as it promises.

We leave the pub and head home with cans now. The ...Little Thing series has been rolling along busily since it began, occasionally producing worthy successors to Hazy Little Thing, but mostly not. The next is at some remove from hazy IPA, being a pilsner called, of course, Crisp Little Thing. It's described on the can as an "easy drinking lager", which tends to be brewer-speak for bland. 4.7% ABV is certainly lower than typical for Sierra Nevada. Still, it looks well, being an enticing limpid gold in the glass, if a little lacking in head. It is crisp, so full marks there, but it's not plain or watery. There's a surprise stonefruit taste -- peach and apricot, with some bonus tropical lychee -- therefore it's certainly not a typical German-style lager like the Oktoberfest. This is definitely American, in a good and very Sierra Nevada sort of way. The fruity side does come at the expense of crispness, and it lacks that dry thirst-quenching power that the name suggests it should have. I'm not complaining, though. Rounded, fruity, uncrisp lagers are still absolutely OK with me when they're this well done.

They're going to run out of "cool" beer words soon, aren't they? With Crisp covered, the inevitable next step is Dank Little Thing. If you fancy some background reading, Stan has opinions. So, the brewery is going all-in on the stoner culture with their marketing here. I'm not sure that they walk the walk, however. Yes, the aroma does have a hard resinous edge, buoyed up by the heat from 7.5% ABV, which gives it a certain front-door-of-Amsterdam-Centraal effect -- weed smoke, not sticky buds. Any similarity ends there, however. The taste is centred on tropical fruits typical of hazy IPA, suggesting pineapple and mango in particular, set on a weighty base with the sweetness of orange-flavoured hard candy. The fruit is quickly overtaken by a sterner herbal bitterness, one which isn't beyond what bittering hops can do, but from the publicity material, and the phrase "ale with natural flavors" on the can, signifies the addition of terpenes. Black's of Kinsale went through a phase of doing this, in four of their beers from 2019, then stopped. It doesn't make the beer taste like weed and I doubt it'll get any stoners on board. Dankness works better when it's a side effect of high quality hops, rather than this sort of novelty contrivance. The overall picture is fine, but it does taste like a sweet and hazy IPA that's been bittered up in a way which does nothing to improve it. We go back to my contention that the original Hazy Little Thing is very hard to better.

Still, it's good that Sierra Nevada is still turning out interesting beers for this blog to cover. That's appreciated. I've often said that IPA is their strength, and a lane that they're best to stay in, but maybe there's room for more lagers too. They certainly appear to have developed skills in that direction.