So what are friends for if not to find and send a book on how to brew your own Sierra Nevada clone? Yes, Amazon offers a few volumes from people who have concocted recipes to create commercial tasting beers in the comfort of your own home. Perhaps this will become illegal under those pesky anti-piracy bills.
Anyway, in a fantastic piece of global symmetry, Dan managed to import a couple of bottles back into America, via friends Sean and Els (and via Fiji - the air miles on these things would make an organic foodie faint!) So at a neighbourhood gathering last night, in the apartment of Eavan who brews his own beer too, I decided to give everyone an exotic treat. To make it a proper experience of NZ-made-US-clone-imported-to-California I employed our 2011 "New Zealand Wild Landscapes" calendar.
The results? Apparently cascade hops are they key, and the connoisseurs agreed that Dan had got the grassy, hoppy freshness just right. I had a bottle each from batches one and two, and the development of the brew and Dan's confidence as a brewer shone through. All he needs now, according to the experts, is to develop a little more of the malty sweetness and Sierra Nevada might as well give up on any plans for the South-West Pacific market.
The bottles pose in front of the Cook River mouth in South Westland.
Fellow brewer Eavan assesses the structure and carbonation in Beech forest, Kahurangi National Park.
Hannah polishes off a glass looking down at Queen Charlotte Sound from Mt Stokes near Marlborough.
Pam takes a draught at the coast near Whitecliffs, North Taranaki.
Sylvia finishes off by Kitekite Falls, Waitakere Regional Park, Auckland.
