Life begins at...

Sierra Nevada celebrates 40 years in business this year, something that must be extra poignant given the rate at which first-wave American craft breweries are selling their credibility or just plain going out of business. The beer to mark the occasion is 6% ABV and amber coloured with a slight haze. The aroma is definitely old school: crystal malt and Cascade, like American beers used to be, out on the craft frontier all those years ago. Hops dominate the flavour: lime citrus, turning to slightly harsh wax. There's a floral background too, the hops providing a mellow balance that one would normally look to malt for. It's fun: punchy, loud, and hop-forward in an old-fashioned bitter way. It's not massively different from the brewery's flagship, but I regard that as a point in its favour.

Even with 40 years on the clock and nothing left to prove, Sierra Nevada can't resist a brand extension or two. Hazy Little Thing has been one of their more recent success stories and where do you go from there but up. Presenting Fantastic Haze, a double IPA version. It's 9% ABV and a medium hazy yellow. The aroma is understated: just a hint of tropical guava and maybe a squeeze of grapefruit behind this. Neither side of that equation is represented in the taste. The base is heavy and thick, and the flavour riding on it is a fruit salad of pineapple, grape, mandarin, apple and strawberry. The syrupy texture helps that dessertish effect along. There are no extremes here: the heat and the sweetness are kept within approachable boundaries, and with these edges smoothed off it risks blandness. It's not bland, though. There's enough going on here to keep the drinker interested, even if it's not the intense experience that New England-style IPAs from smaller brewers offer. That may be bad news for some, but I don't miss the garlic and caraway that the others too often show. This is decent, competent stuff. Sierra Nevada's IPA reliability strikes again.

A few weeks after that landed we got Hazy Little Thing - Session Edition at just over half the strength. It's quite a wan, sickly colour, though the tall head of foam is handsome. The aroma is middle-of-the-road: a wisp of herbal dankness and some worrying savoury garlic. The mouthfeel is quite thin, even for 4.6% ABV. So that's all the bad things out of the way before we come to the flavour, which is magnificent. Fresh and squashy mandarin juice is the opener, then a spritz of lemon zest to provide a token bitterness. The juice turns sweeter and is joined by the fizz to make a quality bitty orangeade effect: Orangina comes to mind specifically, bringing with it sunny holidays in France. I miss the substance provided by original HLT, but this version really does not taste like a compromise.

An odd joint effort next: Triple Hop'd Lager was created with Sierra Nevada as collaborator at the unlikely host Bitburger, mainstreamest of the mainstream German lager factories. The result is 5.8% ABV and... no: that's the sum total of information the exterior of the can provides. For something bragging about the hopping, and less than two months in the can, it smells powerfully of malt: quite a sticky and worty aroma, of cookies and golden syrup. A slight waft of lemon is as hoppy as it gets. The body is very full, unsurprisingly, removing a lot of its lager feel. Meanwhile the flavour is a gentle blend of weedpatch noble hops and American citrus, neither in full voice. I feel a bit gypped that it's more like an ale than a lager; big and chewy. There's nothing very special in the flavour and I'm glad I didn't buy the full sixpack some off licences were insisting on, as drinking one was hard enough work. This is passable but nothing special.

We go out on a big one. Too big for me, actually: my wife sprung €10 for the can and kindly donated a taster to the blog. It's a Barrel-Aged version of Narwhal imperial stout, given the bourbon cask treatment. A favourite feature of basic Narwhal is the hopping: a bitter, metallic clang in the finish, and that seems to have been a victim of the barrels here. Instead you get bourbon up the wazoo and a square of chocolate on the side to distract you. In my original Narwhal review I mentioned that it tastes barrel-aged to begin with, and it turns out that actually doing it doubles down the booze and vanilla, resulting in something tasting even stronger than its substantial 11.9% ABV. A soy-sauce autolysis twang finishes it off and doesn't improve the picture any. It's not a bad beer, just not an improvement on basic Narwhal, and there are plenty of better examples of barrel-aged imperial stouts available, including from Irish breweries.

Here's to 40 more years of safe and reliable hop-driven beers. The world will always need them.

Express delivery

The Sierra Nevada Fresh Hop 12-pack was boxed up on 31st October 2017, around the end of the hop harvesting season, I guess. It arrived in Ireland five weeks later and I was lucky to get to try a few when brewery co-founder Steve Grossman was over visiting.

The trilogy begins with Sierra Nevada Fresh Hop Session IPA, with thanks to the UnderDog crew for sharing from their stash. It's pale gold with a powerful weedpatch nose, all nettles and rocket. The flavour brings an intense acidity, much too harsh for my liking. A growing oat-cookie grain taste emerges as it warms, but does nothing for balance or drinkability. Balancing the hops is always the major challenge of session IPA, and this should have had plenty of scope at 4.8% ABV. Sadly, it doesn't manage it. Moving on...

Sierra Nevada Fresh Hop IPA is a surprisingly murky beast: the company is renowned for the way it keeps yeast stuck to the bottom of the container but this one had skeins of grit floating through it. Thankfully that doesn't get in the way of the hops, which start their day's work with a brightly bitter aroma, all eye-watering citrus spritz. The flavour is an entirely predictable mix of grapefruit and jaffa, sharp and hard, though softened by a big malt base (it's 6.4% ABV) that provides texture without adding unwanted sweetness. This is an absolute classic of US flavours, with all the pith and pine we've grown to love, in a balanced and approachable package. No gimmickry or trend-chasing from Sierra Nevada here.

I was surprised by the brownness of Sierra Nevada Fresh Hop Double IPA, though it settled in the glass a clear and handsome amber colour. Hey, SN: fresh means it's supposed to be murky! What are you playing at? An aroma of hazelnuts and coffee does not say double IPA to me, fresh hop or otherwise. The flavour is bitter, almost to the point of being acrid. The roasted note I got in the aroma turns ashen on the tongue and the whole tastes the very opposite of "fresh". At least it's not boozy: the texture is surprisingly light for 8% ABV. This is a dramatic turn away from the previous two beers, and one I don't care for. At least you don't have to worry about freshness with this one: I doubt it has anything to lose as it gets older.

All three of these, and the Fresh Hop Celebration which completes the set, are available at 25% off in the Stephen Street News January sale which runs until 10pm this evening. Worth a detour if you're in the area.

There were a few other specials on rotation during Mr Grossman's visit to UnderDog. The highlight was the first opened: Cocoa Coconut Narwhal, from the brewery's "Trip in the Woods" barrel-aged series. The base imperial stout is 10.2% ABV and that has been boosted to 11.9% here, turning even more unctuous and gloopy. There's a huge dollop of coconut in the foretaste, then a long a smooth rich fudge middle, before an invigorating spirituous finish. All is classically elegant and balanced, with just the merest hint of oak. My only niggle is that the stout itself is a little lost in all the fripperies: I recall Narwhal being properly bitter, and that seems to have been ushered away without ceremony. The texture is still that of a big imperial stout, though, and maybe that's enough. At least it isn't pretending to be a cake.

That set the standard for the other Trip in the Woods beer, Ginger Bigfoot, which unfortunately couldn't match it. It's another bruiser, at 11.4% ABV, though I think the added ginger contributes more than the whisky barrel. The aroma is like freshly baked ginger biscuits, warming and spicy, while the flavour put me immediately in mind of Canada Dry ginger ale. The texture is sticky which adds a medicinal tone to the whole thing, and more than a hint of herbal mouthwash. The barley wine is buried far too deep in the woods to be tasted any more, only the sickly sweetness remains. This is very much a gimmick beer and by no means an improvement on the original. A small sample was loads.

A different Bigfoot variant pre-dates the Trip in the Woods series, going by the simple name of Barrel-Aged Bigfoot. Once again, however, it succeeds in simply dirtying-up a perfectly good clean and hoppy barley wine. The aroma here is immediately off-putting, all hot and sticky. A foretaste heavy with sappy oak segues into syrupy toffee before finishing acridly bitter. There are no smooth edges or added subtle complexities, which should be the point of barrel-ageing. You get all of the downsides and none of the bonuses. Bigfoot ages much better when left to its own devices.

Finally, a beer that isn't a version of something else, just a plain old Cherry Chocolate Stout. This seems modest by comparison, at just 8.5% ABV, and the flavour is similarly reticent. There's not much by way of chocolate, beyond what you might reasonably expect in a stout of this calibre; and almost no fruit: a wisp of pink cherry creeps in at the very finish. What that leaves in the middle is a perfectly decent, simple, strong stout: cleanly dry and with an assertive hop bitterness. I like how, despite the showy label, the novelty features haven't been allowed to spoil it, even if they're all but redundant.

It's great that an establishment player like Sierra Nevada is still bringing us new things, instead of resting on one or two iconic beers. Steve certainly had that air of restless energy about him which is always good to see in a brewer; even more so in an owner. A big thanks to the folks at Grand Cru Beers for introducing him, and the beers, on the night. Now go out and grab all of that Fresh Hop IPA wherever you see it: it's not getting any fresher.

Let this be a lesson to you

Back in the old days, Irish beer consisted of lager, stout and red ale. In the early days of Irish microbrewing you might have got a wheat beer instead of a lager in there, for those who had travelled to exotic places where beer was cloudy, and besides: lager is difficult. We were so hopeful when pale ale came along and suddenly there was a heretical alternative to the Holy Trinity. Praise be! Alas it seems to have been a bit of a false dawn and all that's happening with many new Irish breweries is the replacing of the lager/wheat beer with pale ale. The Holy Trinity becomes the Hoppy Trinity and we all line up as before (I should add this isn't true for all Irish breweries by any means, but it's a worrying trend for the newest ones who have things much easier regarding their market's willingness to try unusual things).

The thing is, these aren't necessarily bad styles by any means. I thought it would be fun to present an alternative rendering of them, from a real actual brewery somewhere else. And as it turned out, a recent set of releases from Sierra Nevada provided just the perspective I was after.

The stout first, and this is Narwhal: 10.2% ABV so not exactly one for a session of pints. But although it's unctuously thick it's no palate pounder. The aroma is a mild tarriness overlaid with a pinch of alcoholic heat, and that booze is the first thing to leap out of the flavour, and burn down the throat in fact, so forget about chugging it. After this there's a velvety dark chocolate smoothness and a certain woody spiritousness -- whiskey or brandy -- though there's nothing to indicate it's barrel aged. The hops finish the performance with a vegetal, shading to metallic, tang on the end. Not by any means the most deeply complex imperial stout I've ever met, but a damn fine one.

To the red next: Flipside, a modest 6.2% ABV and badged as a "red IPA". It pours out a clear shade of cherrywood and smells a little cheesy, like elderly hops. The texture is light and breezy with an assertive prickly fizz and the flavour is hop dominated but they're far from cheesy here: bitter lime and grapefruit for starters, settling to an earthy orange pith and a bit of weedy dank. I'd like some lighter fruit notes, but I'm not complaining. Above all the hops here taste fresh, in a way that beers that come to us over a fraction of the distance rarely seem to. What's with that? It's not a pale ale in disguise, incidentally: the dark malts add a richness and some very light toast. So proper red ale. The day something like this comes out of the tap as a new Irish red I will be very happy.

We finish with the pale ale, called simply Beer Camp IPA, produced as part of the brewery's annual experimental set of beers. It's a bright gold colour with just a very slight haze. The strength is a smidge higher than Flipside at 6.9% ABV. Another slightly elderly hop smell from this: a bit stale or oxidised. There's an interesting interaction in the flavour: although the hops are Cascade and Centennial they impart a very old world waxiness at the start then disappear to be replaced by the malt sweetness, and biscuits and hard candy. The two interact to make a kind of heavy perfume effect that I'm not a fan of. We get better pale ales than this from our local breweries.

So the IPA was a washout, and they're all a good bit stronger than normal for Irish beers, something I don't suggest changing, but the depth and richness of the stout and the banging fresh hops in the red are things that any brewer would do well to analyse with a view to ripping them off. In the interests of the customer. Me.