Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Is there a better beer on a hot, sunny day? Does anything hit the spot quite like a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? I don’t think it does. Does the perfect summer beer exist? If it does then I guess it’s quite close to this. You have to serve it cold. Drink it from the bottle if you like (but you’ll disturb that gorgeous moonscape at the bottom of the bottle - you can kind of see that below if you click on the pic and enlarge it) or pour it into a glass. It’s a golden glassful, the nose is juicy with citrus and tropical fruits, the body is all biscuits and toffee, the mouthfeel is spot-on and oh-so quenching with those nibbling hops. It isn’t challenging, it doesn’t demand you to pull out distant memories of forgotten flavours, it doesn’t want you to intellectualise it; it just wants to be drunk. Why do people drink cans of Carling when this is only a few feet further up the beer aisle? Sometimes only a beer like this will do. Sometimes only Sierra Nevada Pale Ale will do.
And have you tried their Torpedo Extra IPA? That’s one damn fine beer. It seems that Americans can’t drink an IPA unless it’s 7% so Sierra Nevada have made one. It starts with sweet malt, then the hops pound in, bitter first and then dry. Bread, caramel, pine, grapefruit. There’s something so addictively drinkable about this, it’s just ace.