Beer Camp!

Woohoo! I just got an e-mail confirming that I am a Sierra Nevada Beer Camp Winner. That means that for three days starting end of August I get to hang out at Sierra Nevada, get ultra behind-the-scenes tours, meet people, drink LOTS of good beer, and at the end the group puts together a beer camp recipe that Sierra Nevada will brew.

If you want to see the horribly dorky video I submitted to get selected: http://sierrabeercamp.com/#/view-entries/178

I will of course take as many photographs as they allow and share them with all y'all.

Well, ....and at the end the group gets to share a case of Tylenol for the hangover...

That sounds like a lot of fun! Very different from any othre camp, that's for sure. And you'll have something much more fun than an ash tray to bring home!

We all get samples and pics, right???

Congrats Salanis.... beer camp gotta be win win

Pics: definitely. As many as they allow me to take.

Samples: I will let you know when bottles of our beer camp beer go on sale.

Congrats, I have a friend that submitted a video as well, not sure if he got in.

This was his entry: http://www.sierrabeercamp.com/#/view-entries/130

I was laughing out loud with my head in my palms through that whole thing. I don't know who I'm more embarassed for, you or myself . Looking forward to seeing the beer, SN is one of my favorite west coast brewers.

I had an friend/acquaintance that was in History on Tap, a history channel show that documented a homebrewing contest whose winner was supposed to be brewed for sale to the public by Harpoon, but I never have seen his beer for sale. Maybe this time I'll finally be able to drink a commercial brew that a friend of mine had a hand in :).

Noice. Say hello for me. Then sabotage the place so they stop selling Pale Ale and my employer can make some money

Kidding, of course. Sierra Nevada is the stuff. Bigfoot is delicious.

EvanB wrote: Congrats, I have a friend that submitted a video as well, not sure if he got in. This was his entry: http://www.sierrabeercamp.com/#/view-entries/130

I would say its a safe bet that your friend got in since Salanis got in with 8 likes and your friend got 114 likes.

Congrats! Later you can tell the story that starts "This one time at beer camp..."

pigeon wrote: "This one time at sausage fest..."

I mean, I like a good weekend with the boys and drinking to my hearts content, but hopefully you have some humans of the feminine variety to bring with

there can't be no bad beer camp... can there?

Josh wrote: I was laughing out loud with my head in my palms through that whole thing. I don't know who I'm more embarassed for, you or myself . Looking forward to seeing the beer, SN is one of my favorite west coast brewers.

Like I said, it was pretty bad. You have to be a major brewing geek to get all of my horrible puns too. I would be more embarrassed, except that it got me into beercamp.

Try to find some Ovila Saison. It's their most recent release, and I think it's their best yet. Ovila Dubbel is really good too.

Some beer snobs out here will dog SN for being "too commercial". I can't stand that. Yeah, SN Pale Ale isn't the fanciest craft brew and I rarely bring any home. But it's a beer that I can get anywhere and always be happy with. I can not think of another brewery that is able to produce a beer that good in those amounts (Sam Adams Lager is the closest). Not only are they able to brew an accessible popular beer (that is still satisfying to afficianados), but when they brew fancy stuff or seasonal beers, they are always top notch. That Ovila Saison impressed the heck out of me.

As far as what submissions got chosen or not, the selection was done by SN employees, not outside popular vote.

Nice going! Sounds like a great time. I stocked up on Sierra Nevada ales when I drove through the rockies (Colorado, NM, Arizona) a few years ago. Good stuff.

Salanis wrote: Some beer snobs out here will dog SN for being "too commercial". I can't stand that. Yeah, SN Pale Ale isn't the fanciest craft brew and I rarely bring any home. But it's a beer that I can get anywhere and always be happy with.

I haven't bought a sixer of SNPA in a long time (and probably won't as long as TJ's Mission St. Pale is $4 cheaper and similarly satisfying), but I've never been disappointed to find it in a cooler or on a restaurant menu. I always pick up the Harvest offerings, Bigfoot, and Celebration when they're out, and I've been enjoying the 30th anniversary series as well. I'll have to keep an eye out for this Ovila series, I haven't seen them anywhere up here, but the story behind it is interesting. Is that the first commercially available monastic beer in the US?

Josh wrote: I always pick up the Harvest offerings, Bigfoot, and Celebration when they're out, and I've been enjoying the 30th anniversary series as well. I'll have to keep an eye out for this Ovila series, I haven't seen them anywhere up here, but the story behind it is interesting. Is that the first commercially available monastic beer in the US?

I like their harvest offerings, especially Southern Hemisphere. I like their Summertime Lager a lot too. It's like, floating down the river in an innertube. I hate to say it, but I'm not a big fan of Bigfoot. I think it may be that I just keep drinking it too young. I've never had it more than a year, maybe two, old. I prefer North Coast Old Stock in that style.

Ovila is not the first monastic beer available in the U.S. It might be the first beer produced or associated with a U.S. monastery though. The Abbey of New Clairvaux is pretty interesting. I'm not sure exactly how much influence they have on the development and production of the Ovila beers, but given that they operate their own winery, I suspect a fair bit.

Well, I just returned from one of the best experiences of my life! All the photos can be found here: http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii303/salanis42/Sierra%20Nevada%20Beer%20Camp/

In short, it was two and a half days of continuous beer, tours, food, and more beer all taken care of by someone else.

Day zero was just an evening of drinking and meeting our fellow beer campers.

Day one we started by debating what style of beer we wanted to brew. We ended up settling on a strong IPA with freshly picked estate grown hops. Then came a tour of the main brewing facility. We finished the morning by going out into the hop fields to pick our own fresh Chinook hops that ended up being used for flavor and aroma additions when we brewed.

In the afternoon we did some more tours and went to the Abbey of New Clairvaux who is partnering with Sierra Nevada for the Ovila special release beers. Finally, more drinking in the pub. Along with great beer, they also have the best malted milk shakes I've ever had. They actually take some of the first runnings from the grain mash (the steeped grain tea), and boil them down into a real malt syrup that they use for their malts. Completely different from the malt powder you normally get. Wonderful. Then dinner. Then going out for even MORE drinking.

Day two we went to the pilot brewery to brew our camp beer. It's on the grounds and also houses the main R&D lab, but is only able to brew 640 gallons (40 kegs) of beer at one time.

I was very excited to learn that their Research and Development Head Brewer graduated from the brewing school I'll be going to. The intern working under him right now just graduated from the program earlier this year. I have high hopes for my future opportunities.

In the midst of brewing, we went down to the fermentation cellar and were able to get a few samples of several of the other special release beers they have going down there.

Lunch. More tours. More beer.

Sierra Nevada really is an amazing company. They are something like 97% solid waste efficient. Only 3% goes to landfills, everything else is recycled, repurposed, composted, used for feed, etc. They generate 85% of their own electricity. Really impressive stuff.

Here are us beer campers together with Ken Grossman (the guy with the beard who looks a bit like "the most interesting man in the world"), founder and head of Sierra Nevada. Incredibly cool guy. He told us that since we were home brewers we needed to raid their fresh hop room before we left. So I now have a gallon bag of wet, whole cone hops in my fridge to brew in the next couple of days. I gave him a bottle of my Holiday Ale to say thanks before I left.

Awesome, as big as SN is they continue to surprise me with wonderful beers. Unlike some other breweries who have gotten too big and just aim for mediocrity it seems. Sounds like it was a wonderful experience.

so this one time at beer camp...

I had a few sierra nevada torpedo IPA last night and all I can say is they sunk my battleship. Sounds like a pretty neat event.

If you ever get the chance got to Santa Rosa and check out russian river brewing, they had beer which blew my mind. I had some beer which was call a sour beer and aged in chardonnay wine barrels, totally bitchin.

Another great small brewery is in Weed near shasta lake called mount shasta brewing company. I like going to the smaller more interesting breweries and this one is pretty good.

Looks like you had a great time! Glad to see a bit of the inner workings of a brewery I'm a big fan of.

*one of the few good ones we get here in OK

Argh, I need to go to another brewery, haven't been on a tour in over a year. I need my fix. Perhaps I will check out Sly Fox or Victory tomorrow as they are both within 30 minutes. I am definitely jealous you got to brew on a giant pilot system though.

SupraWes wrote: Awesome, as big as SN is they continue to surprise me with wonderful beers. Unlike some other breweries who have gotten too big and just aim for mediocrity it seems. Sounds like it was a wonderful experience.

They were commenting that they've actually gotten more experimental as time has gone on. Their pilot brewery produces about as much as most local microbreweries does. It's just so small compared to everything else they do, that most people don't get to regularly see the beers produced there.

In Reply to Benzbaron:

I am familiar with Russian river and have had a couple of their sour beers, they have several. They are excellent. I need to go there in person. Sierra Nevada has actually been working with Russian River on a collaboration sour beer. They've been working hard on how to sour the beer without risking contamination of other beers.

Flountown:

The tours we got were incredible. There were other general public tours going on at the same time as ours. We got to go way back into areas of the operation the general public didn't, and got to talk to people they would not. Like, we got to actually do triangle tastings in the sensory room (three beers, one is spiked with an off flavor, pick out which one it is and identify the fault).

Wow, that's awesome man. If I'm ever out West I'm definitely checking out Sierra Nevada. One of the first craft brews I ever drank, and now I'm paid to brew beer, as you will be soon enough!

I am jealous that they have such an awesome operation. Our new brewery will be really kickass, but it won't have freaking hop fields on the premises or anything. We will have a pilot brew system on par with theirs, though, and I'm really looking forward to experimenting.

Congrats again. I'll look for the beer when it comes out. Too bad you chose an IPA, though, I'm a little burned out on hops lately. Shoulda done a huge stout!

Twin_Cam wrote: Congrats again. I'll look for the beer when it comes out. Too bad you chose an IPA, though, I'm a little burned out on hops lately. Shoulda done a huge stout!

We actually went in thinking we were going to do an Imperial Oatmeal Porter. I was looking forward to something other than IPA. We changed our minds in the discussion meeting when the head brewer was telling us about the opportunity to pick fresh estate hops, and that a Porter would completely cover up what was good about that. We decided we'd rather have the opportunity to pick estate hops than have an Imperial Porter. I think we made the right choice.

It should still be good. Aside from two row, we used a big chunk of Golden Promise (a Scottish malt typically used in Single Malt Scotches), about 2.5% rye, and 2% oats. I really wanted a bit of rye since the estate hops were Chinook, and I love the interplay between chinook and rye. We got to taste some first runnings off the mash, and that was a darned tasty grain bill, especially for something light gold in color.

I hope you'll get some out where you're at, but probably not. We only did 20 barrels. The plan is that each camper gets two kegs sent to a local tap house of their choice. The rest will probably go up in SN's brewpub. If it does really well, they might rebrew and bottle it as a special beer camp release.

Twin_Cam wrote: Wow, that's awesome man. If I'm ever out West I'm definitely checking out Sierra Nevada. One of the first craft brews I ever drank, and now I'm paid to brew beer, as you will be soon enough!

You should actually keep an ear out. Apparently they do Beer Camps like every two weeks. This one was only the second consumer beer camp. Usually they do them as outreach to bar owners, media, and representatives from other breweries. So, maybe you could talk your bosses into getting you a slot at one of the industry camps in the future.