When I first heard of the Harvest Ale, I made it my mission to find one here in Nashville – a town not noted for being all that friendly to hard-to-find beers. Well, thanks to my buddy Jim, I found one. By one, I mean one beer. Hey, at least it’s a big-ass bottle. So, I picked a night, poured a glass, and waited with anticipation as the head rose nicely in my pint. I was really interested in how the fresh hops would affect the nose, so I took a big sniff of the 3 finger head and found, honestly, not a whole lot. The explosion of fresh Cascade that I expected was kind of neatly tucked away in there somewhere. I could live with it, though, so I moved on to actually drinking a sip or two. What I tasted reminded me of a slightly skewed version of the Anniversary Ale, with an earthy quality to it. One noticeable change from the other Sierra beers was that the Harvest has a much more pronounced bitterness, which makes sense, and I did enjoy that aspect of the beer quite a bit. The body is medium, color is a really nice copper and super clear – that part is actually pretty impressive. Overall, I’d give it a “really?” It’s good, not groundbreaking. I’d certainly have one again, but I’m not going to go too far out of my way to find it. Cheers ~G
score 3.25
