Celebration Question

How does anyone remember what anything tasted or smelled like a year ago, let alone 15 years ago???

 

I have notes saved on a floppy disk. Remember floppy disks!?

 

Yes, but that's hardly the same as actually remembering the aromas and tastes physically.

 

To answer your question, no. Can't say I have.

 

True. I was also joking. I wasn't taking beer notes 15 years ago.

 

I have to say, I recently finished a sixer of 2012 Celebration and have no intent on getting any more this year. In the past I have gone through 2 cases each winter going back to around 2001.

Maybe its too many recent hop-forward beers/palate shift or something else. Just not digging it this year.

 

Ah yes. And so we start the celebration ale isn't as hoppy threads. You remember what it tastes/smells like 15 years ago? C'mon

 

I think there's some truth to it, all razzing aside. I do think there is more than a little palate shift involved though.

But I think it probably is different. Even assuming they have kept recipe and process identical, it is almost inevitable that you are drinking a more mature beer than you had years ago, even if you are starting at the beginning of the season and getting it at a place that moves their stock and cares for their beer correctly.

The demand for this beer is so much greater than it was back then, meaning there is so much more capacity devoted to it to fulfill that demand, that it can't be the same. To cover the demand, they have to be a) starting way earlier, b) using way bigger fermenters and conditioning tanks, or c) both.

Dry hopping (or wet hopping) is a very time dependent thing, in my experience. My number is 10-14 days. Any shorter and it doesn't add much. Any longer and you start getting grassy leafy aromas. And once you get the beer off the hops, the aromatics start fading almost immediately.

Also, it's a steeping process, so contact area counts. My experience is that hops, whether macerated (plug or pellet) or whole, tend to clump and float. Double the amount of hops in a conditioning tank twice as tall, and you dont necessarily get double the contact area.

I don't think they are cutting corners or anything. But I would expect you are seeing the natural result of SN trying to strike a balance between quality and consistency, economy, and the laws of diminishing returns. Just a stab, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out it'd take $16 sixers to make Celebration the EXACT same beer you had in 1997.

All that said, palate shift is a bitch. The first time I had Celebration, Dogfish Head 90 Minute and Stone Ruination were not even a gleam in Sam's and Vinnie's (respective) eyes yet....

 

Me 2, though its still a damn good IPA. Honestly I attribute it to the the industry these days. There are tons of affordable and available world class hop forward beers available these days, just makes some of the old recipes seem more "standard/mediocre". I can still appreciate how well crafted it is though, great aroma, great lacing, well balanced, and great malt profile. The hoppyness of it is less novel, but its still a great beer although certainly not as special as it used to be and I think thats a testament to the current craft beer scene.

 

Mentioned where/by whom? The current Celebration Ale labels, starting in '10 (as noted in the following link), say only "Fresh Hop Ale" - which Sierra Nevada defines as "...the first, fresh hops of the growing season" , as was always the tradition in the US brewing industry.

Here's how they explain it further on their website (via the page for Southern Hemisphere Havest Ale):

Sierra Nevada uses the term "Wet Hops" for the undried hops used in their other Harvest ales.

Confusingly, much of the rest of the "craft" segment of industry uses "Wet" and "Fresh" interchangeably.

 

That is true, but mostly in the fact that it helps you make things up. Any intro psych book can tell you that memory is incredibly unreliable.

 

THIS YEAR'S CELEBRATION IS GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!!!!!!!!!!!! [Thanks, Tony]

 

That's a shame, man. You're lacking one of the most amazing parts of human life. Are you not capable of love, either?

 

I couldn't remember that stuff either. There are a ton more beers I've tried and can't rate them just because I haven't tried them in so long. The recipe might not have changed from 15 years ago but I'm sure the way the ingredients are treated did, which changes the flavor.

 

Try it again later in the celebration season where it may be a little fresher than the month+ old batch that gets shipped out initially. I usually find later bottling runs to be bit hoppier. Don't know if this is just because of the age - or if subsequent batches are tweaked based on results from initial batches.

 

Celebration is not a wet hopped ale, it is a fresh hop ale, using the first dried fresh hops of the harvest season. It is still copiously dry hopped and has just as many hops as it always did. We changed the label in 2010 to say "fresh hop ale" to help combat the perception of a sweet spiced Christmas beer that has often been associated with Celebration. We're trying to let people know what they're in for. The only spices we use are hops!

As to perception of hoppiness...I drink a damn lot of Celebration every year, and at least for the 5 years I've been working at the brewery, not to mention the 5 years prior where I was a super-fan, I can say to me, the beer is as hoppy and as pungent as ever. Celebration is the first beer that really made me fall in love with Sierra Nevada and I remember distinctly the "holy shit" moment when I really and truly appreciated that beer. I still personally look forward to the release every year, and grab as many cases as I can and hoard them like an angry troll!

-Bill

 

^ So, how are you gonna fight the new false perception that a lot of people have now, that it is a wet hop ale?
"Fresh hop" is confusing and nobody, aside from you guys, uses it in the way you do.
A LOT of people are under the false impression that it's a wet hopped beer, even long time BA's like the OP.