Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale

Brewed by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
Style: India Pale Ale (IPA)
Chico, California USA

Picked up a single bottle of this last weekend, and the guy working the register said that I’d love it. Well, let’s just say the guy knew what he was talking about. The smell is what I expect out of a nice wintery beer - hoppy, complex, and kind of sweet. Tastes very complex with a strong presence of malts, finishing with a nice amount of hoppy bitterness. Overall, it’s a joy to drink, and it warms your soul on the way down.

This is an all time classice. Good all the way around. Not enough aroma. Decent bitterness and good flavor.

Pours clear copper, with a one-finger beige head, fine and lasting lacing. Aroma of pine, grass, grapefruit, caramel and biscuit. Medium body, smooth, creamy and dry. Biscuit, caramel apple, and a really big pine flavor. The pine is very deep and satisfying in the medium bitter finish, just a touch of grass, citrus and maybe even some poinsettia. This is my kind of winter ale!

Aroma: sweet, fruity, caramel. Fresh, piny hops. Pineapple, honey, wort. Very, very nice balance.
Flavour: good, full-bodied, bitter. Lots of caramel and malt and yellow raisins aswell. Burnt sugar and hops. Warming and complex. Delicious. Slightly sourish in the aftertaste.
Appearance: near clear, mystic orange body with orange tinted lathery head clinging to the glass. Very pretty.
Palate: fluffy, rustic, having qualities typical for both beers with little and much carbonation. Thick, dense

Pours a lightly hazy reddish orange with a fluffy meringue like head leaving sheets of lace down the glass. The aroma is dominated by citrus and fruity aromas with lots of raw hop aroma. the flavor is lightly roasty and earthy with a strong grapefruit bracing bitterness (perhaps the most bitter of all the Sierra Nevada beers?) The beer is lightly spicy with light fruity and mineral flavors. Really tasty stuff.

Nice amber color with some strong hops. This is the kind of beer I’ll drink one of a day but hard for me to go more than that.

Vintage 2008. Serving date: 2009-02-11. Served in pint glass. Presentation: 350 ml bottle with freshness date on the label (best before 2009-10-17). Amber colored with copper and red hues, semi-clear. A rather aggressive pour into a pint glass creates a 3 finger airy head that has a strange, light cappuccino color (it actually looks dirty). Good head retention, some lacings. A big hoppy fruity hop aroma, primarily of red and yellow grapefruits, lemon and surprisingly distinct strawberries - dominates. An earthy hop aroma of pine-needles is there as well. Behind all of this, is a faint note or reasonably sweet malts. A quite refreshing smell. At first, some malt flavors appear, but they quickly leave room for a massive taste of hops. They mostly echoes the smell - grapefruits, sharp citric notes and strawberries - but the earthy notes of pine are bigger and accompanied by grass, mint and some tobacco. Although the malts are most noticeable in the beginning, they appear in the middle as well but they get constantly overrun by the hop flavors. The finish is semi-dry, a bit perfumy, contains sharp hops and has a seemingly endless bitterness. Medium body, quite lively carbonation. It’s kind of sharp, but the foam residues smooth things out. I really liked this beer, but I think I was expecting a little more from it, especially considering its hyped status. Although I like its unbalanced character and big hop flavors (the strawberry presence, both in the smell and in the taste, is really great), the bitterness is a bit too to much and overpowers both the hop and malt flavors. Serving type: bottle (Copy of old Beer Advocate review)

2009 bottle. Clear orange pour witha foamy off white head. Aroma is fairly weak, caramel, dust, pancakes. Flavor is soap, bitter, caramel.