Sierra Nevada. If you're a Californian, those words usually conjure up images of snow-covered mountain peaks, the deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe, or the natural wonder of Yosemite National Park. If you're a craft beer lover, you usually think of two words: pale ale.

Here on the West Coast, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is ubiquitous. Even your most horrendous dive bar will carry it. It's no surprise then that my earliest experience with American craft beer started with Sierra Nevada. Even though they're best known for their pale ale, the brewery’s portfolio has expanded over the years to more than 20 different styles. Not bad for a brewing company established by homebrewers out of a barn.

A couple of weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of trying the very limited release Juniper Black Ale from Sierra Nevada. Ramon Gutierrez, the beer specialist/buyer for the Los Altos Whole Foods Market, debuted this beer at Good Karma Vegan Café, situated in downtown San Jose, Calif. Gutierrez had the good fortune of going up to Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, Calif., to participate in their Beer Camp, where he joined about nine others from five different states in brewing this beer from conception to consumption.

I managed to pull Gutierrez aside for a few moments to talk to him about his background, Whole Foods, his time at Sierra Nevada's Beer Camp and, of course, Juniper Black Ale (JBA).

Peter Estaniel (PE): Where do you work now? What do you do?

Ramon Gutierrez (RG): Basically I work at Whole Foods Market out of Los Altos, Calif. I started there about four years ago. I helped open that store, so, you know, it's like my baby. It's like a business, a small business. Basically I was given a schematic diagram of certain beers to put together at that location, put all the shelving in it. I have a 40-foot cold beer case, so all my beer keeps cold. We're limited, so I have a very limited back stock. I like to have my beer very fresh and rotate the back stock. It took a long time to really uniform my beer case. Opening day we had Rolling Rock, we had a lot of crappy beers in there. I had to build my clientele over the past four years. So I even had Pete Slosberg from Pete's Wicked Ale. He started off in Los Altos, lives up in the Los Altos hills.

I get to talk to him a lot. I sat with him at a beer tasting before and he's a great guy and he bought beer from me. There's just some good community out there in the Los Altos area. Lots of beer clubs. There's More Beer!, which used to be Fermentation Frenzy, on the corner. So there's been a good opportunity to showcase what I love to do, to drink beer.

PE: So are you a homebrewer? Is that how you got your start in craft beer?

RG: I've homebrewing eight years now. I first started at Trader Joe’s. I helped open the Mountain View Trader Joes in 2001. A guy named Phil Montebello came in one day – he owns that place Fermentaiton Frenzy. He came in one day and said, “Hey, you should make your own beer. I can get you started, set you up with a beer.” I went down there and got me a beer kit. After that, I was hooked! From then on, it was just history for me. I was just like, I love doing this, you know. So I'm probably on my 53rd batch now as a homebrewer. I do all-grain batches now for the past year and a half.

It was so weird how I got this job at Whole Foods as a beer specialist/beer buyer. Again, I took a year off from working. I was working at Fermentation Frenzy for about 2 years from 2005…

PE: Oh, you worked at the homebrew shop?

RG: Yeah. It just opened my eyes more to what was going on as far as wine making and also beer making. Great recipes for the customers and having them come back in and saying, “Wow, what a great, great concept, I never knew how to do it that way.”

PE: So tell me about the beer and the process behind it.

RG: It's called Beer Camp. Basically, they've been doing this for a year and a half now at Sierra Nevada brewery out of Chico. It's invite only. Basically you got to be in the industry. You have to own your own brewery, own your own pub, bar or be somewhere connected within the industry. For me, being a beer specialist, having beer tasting classes at my store just completely opened customers' eyes and also my distributors. And they thought, “Wow, let's invite you to beer camp.” So I got invited out in October of last year, 2009, and it was a great class, great times. It's a two-day camp.

It's a collaboration beer. It was a beer brewed amongst 10 other people from four other states. We have states involved from Connecticut, Idaho, Washington and Arizona. And we all got together, everybody brainstormed for a batch. Of course, we brewed it out in October.

PE: So was it a fully collaborative experience? Did you guys kick around ideas of what to brew?

RG: Exactly. Why we used juniper berries was pretty cool. One of the guys came in, he owns his own gin and rum distillery. So he brought in about 5 lbs pounds of juniper berries that he sources out from Turkey. Very, very sweet, very aromatic.

The guy from Arizona happened to pick juniper berries, too, four days before the class; a little dry, a little nuttier. So we all decided as a group to incorporate the juniper berries into this beer. As we sat around, okay, how high alcohol strength did we want to get it? We're going into the cold months now in the winter after October so we figured by the time we get it to all the states, by the time we tap it, it'll be pretty damn cold in Connecticut, everywhere. So we wanted to do a nice, heavy, rich, strong beer.

So we gathered around the table rubbing different hops in our hands and smelling them with the juniper berries, it was a good experience. Amazing. So it was dry-hopped with an Aurora hop out of Europe, a brand new hop that Sierra Nevada, as a company, has just gotten into their facility. Very citrusy, very aromatic, similar to Cascade. So we decided to dry-hop with that hop and we decided the beer to be over 8%. It came out to 8.5%, a wonderful beer.

Then we wanted to do something different. We wanted to add in some different type of aromatic on the nose so we decided to use 10% smoked malt into the grain bill of this beer. And once you try it, the nose on it, you get a little of the spice, the juniper of the berries and a lot of smokiness. As it warms up in your hand, a lot of the chocolate malt we used comes out. It definitely has a nice, velvety, creamy texture when it warms up, almost like a stout. And then the layer of smoke comes right in the back of the palette. It's just amazing, amazing, unique beer.  And then we had to sit around and name the darn beer, and we haven't tasted it yet. It has to go through every single state, all five states, all the legal reasons of the label and whatnot. I wanted to call it Blackfoot Juniper Ale, the Bigfoot cousin. My buddy that helped me brew the beer that drove me up there, was part of the class, also from San Jose, Randy, he named the beer JBA.

The cool thing about this event, Beer Camp, it is going to be open to the public in 2010. For about two months this summer they're going to open it up for about six classes. They're going at it a different way. They wanted to do a little “Willy Wonka,” open the “Golden Ticket” type thing six-pack. Some reason the state won't allow them to do that so what they're going to do is have a little essay. You got to write a two page essay why you should be chosen, picked, to go to Beer Camp. So it's going to be open to the public for a limited time.

And they, again, this is the 30th Anniversary for Sierra Nevada. Yes, they're coming out with six collaborative beers. It will be available next March and from there, they told me a few things, what's going to be out. Definitely doing one with Dogfish Head, a couple other ones down the road. I can't really say.

PE: So how hands-on was the brew process? Were you there working the mash tun? Dropping in the hops, too?

RG: We were doing a lot. We were picking up 45 lbs bags of actual malt bags and just throwing them into the grain mill. A process where the water hits it, so it keeps the grain moist and fluffs out. You don't get any of the lost sugars from that.
Interesting process on how they do it. From there it goes into the small brewhouse, again goes to the mash tun where of course all the sugars get converted. It's kind of a long process. During that process we're constantly looking at the color and tasting it as the sugar comes out.

From there it gets pumped out into their actual kettle where hops come in. So we go to the hop room. The hop room is pretty amazing. They use it on a weekly basis. They have a warehouse, probably 65,000 square foot, where they have these 40 lbs bags of hops. It seemed like it would last them a year but it only lasts them a months. Amazing, amazing tour. They use nothing but fresh, whole cone hops. No oils, no pellets. A lot of these breweries nowadays are saving time with not using whole cone hops, using oils and pellets. I can name a few breweries, but it's okay, they're doing good with that style, less clean-up time and all that. So it was an amazing time.

So during the process, as the beer is becoming wort and all the sugars are becoming beer, we go into the hop room and we got all the hops for our recipe and fill up these giant 8 lb buckets of hops. It was roughly, I think about for this 800 gallon batch, 40 lbs of hops, and this is not including dry hopping. We were just packing these buckets and throwing them. It was a beautiful sight. The pictures we took were amazing, too. Just being there, it was a really, really cool time. I hope I can go again.


Tasting Notes: Juniper Black Ale, 8.5% ABV

Very, very dark brown, nearly an opaque black with a thin beige head. The beer has a medium-high roast flavor with coffee, chocolate notes and a subtle smokiness. JBA is a slightly sweet beer balanced by a medium-level of hop bitterness. The hop flavor and aroma is citrusy in nature. The aroma of JBA echos that of the flavor. JBA is a medium/medium-high bodied beer with medium carbonation.

-- Peter Estaniel

[Note: Portions of this interview were condensed and edited for clarity.]