Sierra Nevada - Southern Hemisphere Harvest

Today is the first day of real Autumn temperatures at my house. My outdoor thermometer is sheltered and always seems to read a little high. This morning it read 40F (4.5C). The house dropped down to 64F (18C).

So I spent this morning getting the house ready for winter. Mainly this means covering the evaporative cooler and making sure the boiler still works.

After all that work, I decided to crack open something refreshing: Sierra Nevada's Southern Hemisphere Harvest 2012.

This beer uses only freash hops from New Zealand: Pacific Hallertau, Motueka and Southern Cross.

I had it with some left over spinach, chicken, & parmesan pizza from last night.  Mmmm... nothing better than spinach pizza.



Statistics on the beer from the website:

OG = 14.7P
FG = 3.9P
6.7% ABV
IBU = 66
Pale & Caramel Malts
Bittering Hops: Pacific Halertau
Finishing Hops: Moteuka & Southern Cross

This is a lovely honey-caramel colored IPA with a creamy whipped honey butter colored head.

Right off the bat, I can pick up the distinctive lemon-lime zest flavor of Motueka. The resiny pine must be coming from the Southern Cross. It's also a piney that manages not to be catty. And finally there is some earthy-spiciness coming from the Halertau.

This beer doesn't drink like a 66 IBU beer and that is because Halertau is not an aggressively flavored hop.

It also made a good beer to sip on while fixing my oven. The bottom heating element broke.

Although in retrospect... Maybe drinking a beer while working on a 220V large appliance maybe a bad idea. I thought I unplugged it but unplugged my fridge instead.

Dumb, I know.  The plugs looks totally different.  But the fridge plugs in behind the oven & vice versa.  I was confused.

It sparked when I unscrewed the heating element because the connector was breaking.

I'm fine, really.