A couple of months back I picked up a Sierra Nevada Stout. I kinda figured it wouldn’t be a really great stout like Bourbon County, partly because it was from a larger craft brewer, and it wasn’t in their special releases that tend to be bigger more complex offerings. Nope, this one is just their stout that is available year round and only cost me about $1.25 for the bottle. So I wasn’t expecting it to be huge like a Victory Storm King or a Avery Mephistopheles Stout. But, I also know that Sierra Nevada makes good, very solid beers. I drink their Pale Ale every time I go to my local bar, and it is a very good daily drinker. So I know they have some brewing chops.
What I wasn’t prepared for was to really enjoy a stout that was in so many ways inferior to the big bold and thick brews I had mentioned above…
Indeed this stout was pretty thin. It poured almost like an ale it was so thin, but had a HUGE amount of carbonation! The head was ridiculous! After I snapped this shot I kept pouring and the head actually came up about an inch over the rim of the glass! It was pretty cool, and had great retention. Left a lot of lacing as you might expect too.
The nose was pretty interesting for a stout. Obviously there was a lot of roasted malt and I could pick up on coffee and chocolate, but there was also a lot of hops. Very intriguing for a stout. I love hops, I’d eat hops if I could, I love them that much, so having hops appear in the nose of this stout was a real treat.
But what about the taste? After all that is most important right? Well it was interesting. I had the kind of typical flavors you would expect from a stout chocolate, roasted malt nuttiness, and a little coffee flavor as well, but the finish had those hops making an appearance, and this wasn’t just a cameo, they were a full on co-star. The mouthfeel was thin, but not watery, kinda medium bodied.
So how does this stack up, well it isn’t going to rock the stout world, and it doesn’t taste like you just drank liquid licorice, but it has a very nice flavor, and a really good serviceable quality that makes you think this is pretty good. It is like the other Sierra Nevada brews, solid and good. And that’s all I have to say about that.
-Don
Beer & Whiskey Brothers 
So it’s kind of a session/every day stout? What’s the ABV?
Its 5.8% ABV. so almost a session stout.
Great info, Don. As a cook, do you think you can use this as a substitute for more pricey stouts in recipes or will the thinness be an issue? Just curious. I always cringe a little when I dump a stout into a cake or bbq sauce.
I wouldn’t use this one for cooking, because of the hop bite in it. I think it would make a recipe that called for a stout taste weird.
Nice Don. I’ll have to give this one a try. Generally pass it up on the shelf because there’s generally something more interesting, or limited sitting right next to it. Thanks for the insight!
It was a good beer just like most Sierra Nevada beers are good. They know how to brew, and it shows through. Sometimes I’m on a limited budget, so these little $1 bottles are great finds for me.