One of the great ironies of unemployment is that with all this free time there seems to be very little to blog about. Even when I attempt to force myself into weekly benchmarks, I find little time to keep up with them.Well, let's try again and with something I'm pretty good at -- drinking beer. And with every visit to the Lakewood Whole Foods or Central Market, I scan the beers for anything new or interesting. This week's victim: Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale.
I had encountered, for the first time, one of Sierra Nevada's Fresh Hop Ales back in November while working in the OC. It was one of many beers I found in the Tustin Whole Foods' Wall-o-Beer. These beers are brewed with fresh hops picked the day before brewing. I gave that beer a B+.
As with most pale ales, this pours out with a beautiful copper with a thick foamy head.
OK, enough of that beer nerd shit. Is it good???
Yes.
A lot of hoppy beers balance their hoppiness with lots of malt. And what you get is a very sweet bitter pinecone. When it works, it works fabulously (see Langunita's Hairy Eyeball). And going into this tasting, I was not in the mood for an overly sweet beer. Just something nice to wind down the day.
With an ABV of only about 6.75%, there was not an over abundance of malt used to make this beer. So there was only a slight sweetness but a nice maltiness. The hops were relatively light for this style of beer from this brewery, but still enough to satisfy all but the hoppiest of hopheads.
Ultimately this may be an example of the right beer for the right time. But I'm still going to give it a:
B++
Not good enough to make an A, but it was a little better (although honestly I don't remember) than it's predecessor. Yeah, I'm making this stuff up as I go along. But at least I'm posting something.
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