No, it’s Martinez.
One recent Saturday afternoon, my wife and I were trying to decide where to go for lunch. On a whim, we decided on the Creek Monkey Tap House. We’d been there before and had a great experience, so we thought, why not?
Wow, am I glad we did.
Turns out, it was Sierra Nevada Occupy day. The Creek Monkey has 20 taps, and every single one featured a different Sierra Nevada beer. I couldn’t have imagined such a thing in my wildest dreams. Among the usual suspects (Pale Ale, Porter, IPA, Summerfest, Stout, etc) were normally brewery-only beers, as well as this year’s Beer Camp series (more on that in a later post).
Only one thing tarnished the perfection of this experience. Creek Monkey doesn’t do samplers, so I had to choose just one out of all of these limited edition brews. After much deliberation, I settled on the Floral IPA, one of the Beer Camp ales. Also known as Long Stem IPA, the brewery notes the brew is a traditional IPA brewed with “aromatic natural rose hips and petals for complex aromas and unexpected flavors.”
To be honest, while this is another outstanding IPA from Sierra Nevada, the “floral” aspect is muted at best. It is extremely aromatic, as all SNBC IPAs are. Roses appear very faintly at the back end, once the dominating hops fade a bit.
The beer pours a dark gold, nearly orange. I didn’t really experience anything “unexpected” in the flavor department. Hops dominate, of course, with a twang of extra tartness. In terms of hop intensity, I’d place this squarely between their regular Torpedo offering and maybe the Hemisphere series. ABV is 5.9%.