If you read this blog on a regular basis you'll know I'm keeping a Drunk Diary this month, if you're paying attention to it you'll know that I drank 3 bottles of Sierra Nevada Torpedo yesterday.
To me, Sierra Nevada are a very interesting brewery, they produce a massive amount of beer every year and yet they still seem to be considered a 'micro'-brewery! I consider them a craft brewery rather than a micro because they make beer the right way and still manage to make large quantities of beer. Usually when a Brewery starts making bigger quantities the beer geeks/purists/snobs/raters, call them what you will, complain about a lack of consistency and loss of street cred. Apparently if you make large quantities then you aren't sticking to your values, not sticking it to the man, you become 'the man'. My Mate Sid Boggle wrote a great piece of this
here Now Sid's piece was written about a trend toward so-called extreme beer and the fact that the beer snobs don't consider a brewer credible if they don't make at least one super strong beer. The beer snobs tend to forget facts like Sierra Nevada doing big beers like the Bigfoot, trying to move into 100% sustainable energy production, the fact that the brewery is still owned by one of its founders, hardly uninteresting sell-outs.
The Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA is not an extreme beer, it is however still interesting and well worthy of the title a craft brew. It has a big hop character but it also has balance bought to it by a perfect combination of Two Row Pale and Crystal malts bought together with the Magnum, Crystal and Citra hops, Magnificent! This could fast become one of my firm favourites.
