I recently got a rare opportunity to interview Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale; the beer, itself. I met the beer in the taproom at the Chico library; there are a lot of taprooms in this town. We got some fresh pints of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – “Hey, little bro!” Celebration greeted the glass – and got to work.
Lew Bryson: First off: I can’t begin to tell you what an honor this is. Big fan, long-time fan, and my wife – hey, Cathy – is sitting over there just crazy over being in the same space with you. Maybe you could do an autograph for her after?
Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale: Ha, yeah, I get that a lot; more than you’d think for an anthropomorphized idea of a beverage. Sure, no problem, glad to. Hey, could we get a six-pack of me and a Sharpie over here, please? Yeah, here you go…to Cathy, right? Cheers, enjoy me.
LB: Oh, that’s awesome, thank you. So… Can I call you Cele? I hear that’s what the cool kids in California call you.
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SNCA: No, man, don’t do that. No offense, but that’s for brewery people only. You understand. You gotta earn that.
LB: No problem, I hear you. I’m gonna call you Celebration then, because, you know, respect. And you’re they/them, right?
SNCA: No, I don’t do second-person pronouns. At all. You can call me “the beer” if you want to. That’s what I am; a beer. People talk to me, they think we’re friends, they write me letters. Look, I get that you like me, and you’ve known me for years, but seriously; I’m just a beer.
LB: I understand, but I disagree on one point; you’re not just a beer. You’re an OG American craft beer, one of the first of the greats in the pantheon, and one that’s stayed the strongest. But that brings up a question: in over 40 years, you’ve never gone mainstream, never stepped up to year-round. Is that a mystique flex, or do you not want to to be taken for granted? Or is it about the fresh hop thing, you can only be seasonal?
SNCA: You know, 40 years ago, there weren’t enough great hops to go around, fresh or not. But beers like me, and Bell’s Two Hearted, and my buddy Russian River Blind Pig, we went big on the hops, huge on them, and hops has boomed, baby, taken off. Hell, even the Germans are going wild with the hops; it’s not just the ‘noble’ stuff anymore, it’s like a revolution, all ‘alpha to the people’ over there. Australia, New Zealand,…
