Sierra Nevada Wanderland

Bought singles of Wanderland and Big Little Thing. Both were okay, but neither of them made me wish I had bought more than one.

 

And to think, everybody was worried about "Big Beer" ruining craft beer. Looks like craft brewers, or maybe more appropriately craft drinkers since brewers only produce what we are willing to pay for, did a pretty fair job of that themselves. Whoda thunk that hazy IPAs, pastry stouts and fruit smoothie sours would be the styles to bring it all crashing down? I'm being facetious, of course..................................................or am I?

 

Sounds terrible, hopefully fruited lagers don't become a thing, I have a hard enough time finding good (and fresh) domestic lagers as is. Will be the first SN seasonal I've passed on in 10+ years.

 

Sure is starting to look that way, it's truly sad.

 

As a customer who has been purchasing Sierra Nevada beers for decades I too am sad about this situation.

It seems that Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. has made a decision to chase new trends (and a new beer drinking demographic?). While I have a sense of appreciation of why they made this decision (i.e., they are chasing the money) it leaves me with a 'empty' feeling.

Business strategists will often characterize the stakeholders of a business (e.g., employees, shareholders in the case of a publicly traded company, etc.) but in my opinion an important stakeholder is the end customers (e.g., me). All of the decisions I have seen from Sierra Nevada since Jeff White became the CEO indicate to me that customers such as me is the least important stakeholder of the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company business. I suppose they have the 'right' to do this but....

Non-cheers to the 'evolution' of Sierra Nevada!!

@SierraTerence

 

Very well said!

 

Isn't Hazy Little Thing one of their best sellers, seems like they're serving those customers fine. One thing that has popped up in recent years is the squeeze being put on the medium to large size breweries as people are turning more toward local breweries for hazies and fruit flavored beers etc. I think this is a case of giving the customers what they want (those turning away from large breweries to local ones in the hope of winning them). We also hear about freshness being an issue for IPAs, if these larger breweries were to brew styles that don't sell, then we'd end up with a lot of shelf turds.
However I don't like them turning away from the mix packs they had in prior years, about five or six years ago they had a lovely Kolsch style beer in their summer pack, I thought they should have made this their Summer seasonal and Summerfest their year round.

 

I discussed this recently in another thread:

“Last figure I saw for HLT was it accounted for around 25% of SN's income…

“Hazy Little Things is supposedly the only SN beer that is growing in triple digits…”

https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...maria-stipp-as-ceo.646309/page-2#post-7016498

I could take you to my local beer retailer(s) and show you lots of old hoppy/IPA beers from the larger, distributing breweries (e.g., Stone, Sierra Nevada, etc.).

I have posted similar thoughts many, many times in past BA threads.

Cheers!

 

I thought Melvin already became the next Stone, minus the long history.

 

I bought a 6 pack because it's not an IPA or a sour. If it sucks then I don't see myself buying much of anything from them until Oktoberfest in the Fall. Even then, if that's not better than last year I won't be buying much all year, as I'm not a Celebration fan.

 

I drank one six pack. It was O.K. That is all.

 

also minus the litigation

 

It would be much better @5%. It would be a good summer option at that abv. Didn’t taste like an IPA at all.

 

If you don't want to wait that long my grocery store still has two 12 packs in stock.