Name – Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Our Brewers Reserve Grand Cru
Country – United States
Type – American Strong Ale

I’m in the blend kind of mood aren’t I?  Yesterday we had Lukcy Basasrtd from Stone that is a blend of their Bastard beers.  Today we have the final beer in the 30th Anniversary series from Sierra Nevada.

This blend contains three of the most popular brews from Sierra Nevada.  It has a bourbon oak barrel aged version of Bigfoot along with Celebration and their famous Pale Ale.  Then once they are all blended together the beer is dry hopped for an extra hoppy bite.

So how will this one fair against what I think is a pretty damn good series from Sierra Nevada?  Let us see.

It pours into my Cigar City snifter a mostly clear red color with a nice sandy colored head.

The nose has a lot of citrus hop aromas too it with a underlying scent of caramel.  I’m struggling to pick up any of the barrel in the nose.

The taste unleashes more hop character at you with some mild roasted and caramel malt flavors.  I start to get some taste of the barrel here and it has a bit of an alcohol bite to it.  It becomes even more so as it warms up.

I will say that I had this on tap at the Funky Buddha recently and was floored by it.  But out of bottle it didn’t seem the same.  The bottled brew seemed hoppier than sweet from the malts.  I don’t really know what would cause such a difference in a beer that is probably the same age but just in different containers.

Either way it is still a good beer but I liked it much more on draft.  I will still probably get another bottle to sit on for some special occasion as the label mentions, and as I’m doing with the Jack and Ken’s Ale that I thought was incredible.  If you see this beer on tap you absolutely must try it though.  I say get a bottle as well but draft is a can’t miss.

Grade – B+