If you’re like me and have a lot of friends from outside of the San Luis Obispo area, you probably know what it’s like to have them come into town looking for the best beers of the area.
We go out of our way to find something special to fit the occasion, which is exactly what my roommate and I did last weekend with a friend coming in from Texas.
Virtually all of the West Coast’s breweries were a mystery to him. So it was easy to introduce him to beers from Firestone Walker and Sierra Nevada.
But you always want to go that little bit extra and find something special. So my roommate picked up a bottle of Sierra Nevada’s 30th anniversary brew.
The bottle and label are dark, but the beer itself was beyond that; it was similar to staring into space on a starless night. I held my tulip glass up to the light, looking through the bottom and couldn’t even see through it. That’s how dark it was.
This of course reminded our buddy from Texas of home — the land of oil. He appreciated the sentiment.
At one point later in the night, they actually referred to the Sierra Nevada we had earlier as sludge.
The 30th anniversary isn’t a typical dark beer, it’s actually an imperial stout, meaning that it’s more than your average stout or porter; doubles are usually pretty hardcore.
With a 9.2 percent ABV, you know that this beer is going to hit you.
I’m usually not a fan of beers that smell or taste like smoking wood or coffee, but I know that a lot of people really love it. Personally, I can’t even stand the smell of a campfire on my clothes the next day. It drives me nuts.
But this beer’s taste wasn’t extremely smoky. It was tolerable even for someone who doesn’t like it, so this beer is worth a try.
When I’m drinking a dark beer, I generally prefer something that’s a little less heavy on the coffee and a little heavier on the chocolate, like a 1554 from New Belgium.
But this brings up a great conversation for people who like to try different kinds of beers.
If you’re going to drink something like this 30th anniversary special and then have something light like a Blue Moon, you may want to reconsider.
My roommates and I made the horrid mistake of having this overpowering beer before drinking the lighter beers that we actually had a session with.
If you’re planning on having a session, you absolutely must drink this beer last. Its taste is so powerful that it will linger in your mouth while you’re drinking your other beers.
The general rule for drinking beer is to go from light to dark.
It can be tempting when you have something special you want to try, but don’t give in. Fight the power.
It’s a rough process because you also don’t want to be drunk when you drink your good beer. This can cloud your judgment on what actually qualifies as a good beer.
One time I was drunk enough to think that Keystone Light was actually ‘not that bad.’
You don’t want that on your conscience. It’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life.