Sierra Nevada Celebration is a classic yet unusual holiday beer

Dec. 21, 2019 7:12 AM PT

Sierra Nevada Celebration (6.8 percent alcohol by volume) is a.) a classic and b.) an oddity. Billed as a “fresh hop ale,” this annual winter beer appears months after most fresh hop beers have disappeared from the market.

That’s because the Chico brewery isn’t using wet hops, the just-harvested ingredient found in most fresh hop beers. Instead, Sierra Nevada selects Cascade and Centennial hops during the harvest, then dries enough for Celebration.

Celebration is an unusual holiday beer, too, lacking the usual spice and citrus bouquet. This red IPA has toffee-like malts and generous helpings of the aforementioned hops, which give this beer an enticing wind-through-the-pines aroma. Celebration’s recipe is tweaked each year and earlier vintages had more zest than the current one. Still, this is a welcome addition to holiday parties and meals.

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Peter Rowe

Peter joined The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1984. A native Californian who grew up in Encinitas, Rowe is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Northwestern University. He is past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a former Fulbright scholar. He has won a few journalism awards, but would trade them all for a chance to avenge his 1994 “Jeopardy!” loss. Married to a terrific woman who has saved him from errors in writing and in life, he has three sons. At the U-T, Rowe writes profiles and features and is even paid to review beers, which hardly seems fair.