Oktoberfest Review – Sierra Nevada & Gutmann

Enough Okto talk and time for an Oktoberfest bier review as we dive into the 2024 cross cultural collaboration between Sierra Nevada with Brauerei Gutmann.

At 6%, this Oktoberfest is on the higher side. The beer pours a yellow streaked orange and the malt is strong in the aroma. The first has a big hit of minerality to it. Which is followed by the malt profile. I detect a little orange peel hop note swirling around as well. Also getting a hefeweizen note as well which makes this beer a bit of a hybrid.

Smore-whal

Sierra Nevada’s famed Narwhal is getting a campsite variant with a Barrel-Aged Toasted S’More.  It is an imperial stout aged in Bourbon barrels with cocoa nibs and natural graham cracker flavors.  No mention of marhsmallow though for this 11.9% beer.

Okto-Wheat

Can you imagine being a brewery since 1701?  Crazy.  Just crazy enough that Sierra Nevada has tapped Brauerei Gutmann, for the 2024 edition of their collaborative Oktoberfest.

This year’s beer celebrates with more wheat malt in the recipe in a nod to Gutmann’s famous Hefeweizens.  There are also Saphir hops to add a little lemon to the proceedings.

Selected Daisies

Hard to believe that Daisy Cutter from Half Acre Beer is 15 but time does fly.  In honor of that anniversary comes DC Select Double IPA, a collaboration with Sierra Nevada Brewing.

“For Daisy Cutter Select Double IPA, both teams hand-selected special lots of freshly harvested Centennial from CLS Farms, a fifth-generation family hop grower in the Yakima Valley. All agreed on a selection that presented punchy notes of sweet, bright citrus, with a touch of background earth. We used it to build a recipe that echoes the ages – Classic IPA.”

Fire Two

Sierra Nevada is expanding their torpedo fleet by two with the upcoming release of Pacific Torpedo a West Coast IPA featuring Magnum, Chinook, CTZ and Idaho 7 hops and also Dank Torpedo a DIPA that the brewery says is “packed with sticky golden lupulin”.

More Snow

Sierra Nevada has done a couple different Snow Cones. If memory serves, there was a White IPA and Belgian one previously.

Now there is a tropical Snow Cone…

…and it’s a lovely gesture for a retiring member of the SN team too.

Just a Stout

A lot of craft beer fans are itching to have the behemoth 2023 version of Sierra Nevada’s Hoptimum but for those looking for a more retro track….how about…

Stout, just stout. A non-bruising 5.8% stout that will be in a can this year!

Fresh ‘n’ Frozen

I won’t try to explain the science behind it but Sierra Nevada has a new version of Torpedo in (and only in) their hoppy sampler box called Cryo Fresh™.

Per the press release it “freezes hop harvest in time. Hops are most intense right when they’re picked, but they fade fast. Now the freshest, most powerful hop flavor is always within reach. The innovators at Yakima Chief Hops isolated pure lupulin from just-picked wet hops, the source of hop aroma and flavor. Stored at subzero temperatures, these hops provide hop field freshness, anytime.”

Seems a combo of innovation and marketing but would be a good taste test with regular Torpedo.