Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest

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

This beer taste’s excellent!!! One of Sierra Nevada’s best!! The hops are incredibly fresh and the flavor is absolutely amazing! One of my new favorites, I still love Boont amber ale the best, anything from Anderson Vally Brewing or Mendocino Brewing Company for that matter, but this is some good stuff! Good Job Sierra Nevada!

24 oz Bottle, Wow is also my first impression. Pours a deep orange color with a nice frothy head. Strong scent of citrusy hops. The taste is even better, very hoppy yet not overly bitter, citrusy, slightly sweet. Has a delicious long lingering aftertaste. Pretty strong at 6.7 % but no alcohol taste. I’ve never given a beer a perfect score before but this is my new favorite. Outstanding.

Presentation: It was poured from a brown 24oz bottle into a pint glass. The label reads 2nd release 2009. Appearance: The pour produced a tall thick and pillowy foam head. It is light tan in color and has great retention. It keeps a nice one finger thick cap all the way down the glass and as I drink, it leaves behind nice lacing on the glass. Under this head is a deep rich amber colored liquid. The beer is not totally clear as I noticed that there is a very fine yeast particle haze in it. Smell: The aroma has a citrus like hop character with some pine notes as well. Under that are some light bready/malty notes with just a hint of raw grain and even some fruity/estery/yeasty notes. Taste/Palate: The flavor has a sturdy base of bready malty sweetness with a touch of raw grain. Hop flavor is the focus here though, and they add an assertive yet well balanced bitterness and solid citrus (lemon and orange rind and pith) sweet spicy herbal and mild pine like flavor notes. The finish has a long slow bitter hop fade. Its palate has a nice lively feel with plenty of soft carbonation and a good solid medium body. Notes: This beer is absolutely outstanding. I really enjoyed the play between malt sweetness and the solid hop bitterness.

This is the best new beer I have tried in a year! The only beer that came surprising close to "outstanding" was this years version of Celebration Ale. The color of these beer wonderful and it is bottle conditioned, so you can just see the lees on the bottom. Fresh hop ales (like Bert’s) often surprise me, but often have a background flavor of chlorophyll or mint that I just don’t like. Sierra Nevada hit this beer on the head! The aroma is out of this world. The flavor is awesome, bitterness is balanced beautifully against a moderately malty IPA. These are clearly American hops, cascade and others, but they were grown in New Zealand! Thank God good hops are being grown somewhere besides the US PNW and the Noble hop regions of Europe. The hop gods have certainly blessed this beer ... I am in love! My nearest comparison in blind taste test might be Two Hearted Ale (which is probably a bit more caramel) and I KNOW that this beer is much better than that great beer! Not everything Sierra Nevada makes is a winner, but this beer is the beer to beat in its category! Somebody prove me wrong :-)

@ Flying Saucer in Nashville, TN - This is a great beer. I thought I’ve had their best beer until I tasted this one. This has to be the best beer I’ve had by Sierra Nevada. It has a very sweet and fruitful taste that is very clean and crisp. I would highly recommend this beer to anyone.

Excellent appearance. Deep and orange, with a full meringue like hop head, fluffy and thick. Delicious spicyness of hops, with an overwhelming suggestion of freshness, as the label explicitly states. Delicious hops, but not overwhelming. There is no hint anywhere throughout an entire 24oz bottle that this is a bottled beer. Totally clean and deliciously fresh. After drinking a 24oz bottle of this, I poured myself a mug of the amazing Smuttynose IPA-- and it tasted noticeably less fresh (too polite to say stale-- still a great beer, though). Easily, easily the best Sierra Nevada I’ve had. A superb brew and an excellent value as I found it priced. Update and rerate-- bought 8 more bottles of this beer and will be buying as many more as I can find. Too bad this is a seasonal. Easily one of the 5 best beers I’ve EVER had and a very close second best IPA ever, behind Dogfish Head 60 from the tap run through the re-hopper.

What a beautiful pour -- cascadining into a gigantic head over bright orange and active goodness. The aroma is a crisp, floral hop farm -- where’s my swimsuit? I want to dive in. Nice chewy hop drinker, with a citric, acidic sting to finish it off. Very nice. 2008 1st Release version. (#3491, 11/2008)

(2008, 1st Release, 24oz, $4.19)
lct-cpr, ^eff, lasting-creamy-wh-head, med-body(sticky T3), ^co2(crisp T2), thick-lace.
aroma: fresh-creamy-hops §biscuity-malt.
flavor: chamomile §biscuity/crml-malt T1, bright pine-juicy §grassy T2, ^sticky-hrbl-hop-resin T3.
fresh-squeezed-piney-hop-juice.
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(2009, 2nd Release, br-btl bu/cm-lbl, 24oz, 6.7%, “fresh hop harvest ale”)
lct-cpr, thin-cm-hd, crmy-med-body, med-co2.
aroma: sweet-malt leafy-hop.
flavor: sweet-malt T1, ^fresh-resiny-leafy-hops §barleywine §mtllc T2, dryish-hop-resin §mtllc T3.
hops: not citrusy, not piney, not herbal, leafy, §floral, very good.