News: October 2010

Thirty years on from its founding, California’s Sierra Nevada brewery is celebrating its own success and the growth of the US craft brewing movement with the launch of four limited-edition bottled beers.

The beers are all collaborations, brewed in conjunction with other leading lights in the development of the American craft beer movement.

Presented in corked, 750-ml bottles, they include Fritz and Ken’s Ale (a stout devised by Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman with Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing), and Charlie, Fred & Ken’s ‘Imperial Helles Bock’ (Grossman working with home brewing pioneer Charlie Papazian and veteran beer scribe Fred Eckhardt).

The other two beers are Jack and Ken’s Ale (a barley wine conceived with Jack McAuliffe, founder of New Albion, America’s first new craft brewery in the 1970s), and Our Brewers Reserve (a blend of Sierra Nevada’s acclaimed Pale Ale and Celebration Ale with oak-aged Bigfoot barley wine).

Donations from the sale of the beers will benefit charities in the USA. A limited quantity of the beers is to be available in the UK, via importer Vertical Drinks.