Stateside to remain in action for another 3 months...Sierra Nevada Beer Camp Feature!

Long story short, I was denied entry back into the EU. I really don't know what to say or think about all of this, but I do know that I have to make the best of this unfortunate situation. After an incredibly long couple of days, I am back in New Brunswick and for the time being "working" at the Brewpub; until I can figure out what to do! If anyone knows of any available beer related jobs and has a place that I can crash; please let me know.

Prior to my attempt at leaving the country, I did manage to get my hands on the Sierra Nevada Best of Beer Camp 12pack, a third of which were intended to be shared in Paris. Considering that the airline lost my checked bag full of beer, they might still make it to Paris after all.

Just so everyone knows, Beer Camp is unfortunately not something that everyone can go to but there is a contest running right now, not exactly sure about the details but I am going to look into it since I am going to be stuck here for the next three months!

Up first, I went with the California Common. The style that was created by Anchor brewing in 1896 and trademarked as "Steam Beer" is starting to gain popularity, but is not really all that "common". Whatever you want to call this style, it is essentially a light bodied American Ale brewed with a Lager yeast. In all honesty, I had really high hopes for this beer as I enjoy Anchor Steam and wanted to see what Sierra Nevada's take was like. I was somewhat dissapointed with it because the abv was way too high for the style and thus resulted in a residual sweetness and uncharacteristic slickness in the mouth feel. A nice enough effort, but nowhere near as good as I was hoping.

Beer Camp #8: California Common: 6.5%abv

Up next was the Weizenbock. As many of you know, I am a huge fan of German styles and the strong wheat beer is one of my favorites. Oddly enough, as much as I thought there was too much alcohol in the California Common, I felt that the Weizenbock was a little low in abv. Despite that, I thought their interpretation was pretty spot on and all in all was probably my favorite of the four beers.

Beer Camp #37: Weizenbock: 6.6%abv.

With Sierra Nevada being one of the premier breweries in the hop department and considering that earlier this year they bottle an amazing DIPA called Hoptimum (another beer camp beer) I also had high hopes for this one and was a bit dissapointed. Certainly an aggressively hoppy beer with some good balance, it just didn't really have much character compared to some of their other  hoppy offerings, like Celebration and Bigfoot.

Beer Camp #29: Double IPA: 8.5%abv

Finally, probably the most unique and interesting beer of the pack, the Juniper Black Ale was pretty awesome.  I think that they might have just been better of releasing this beer as some sort of fall seasonal six pack. Thick in body but well carbonated with solid notes of chocolate, caramel, pine and citrus hops, this was an excellent beer. As far as the Juniper, it was present in the nose and added an interesting layer to the complexity of it, but wasn't quite as prominent as I was expecting. Which quite possibly is a good thing because I don't really know how fond of Juniper I am...

Beer Camp #36: Juniper Black Ale: 8%

I know that I debated whether or not to pick these beers up because of the format and the price tag and if you are considering dropping the 20 bucks, I hope that this helped. All things considered, I did enjoy them and would recommend going in on a 12 pack with a friend or two and then they would definitely be worth trying!