Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp 12-packs land in Asheville

The Beer Camp Across America 12-pack features some of the country's best brewers, from Bell's and Russian River to New Glarus and Ballast Point.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you already know all about Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp Across America. In short, the brewery has invited every craft brewer in the nation to a massive road trip across the United States. They’re starting in Chico, Calif., the site of the original Sierra Nevada brewery, on Friday, July 18, and ending in Mills River where the new facility is slated to come online on Sunday, Aug. 3.

DSC_0095Each region will feature brewers from that part of the country — be they West Coast or Mid-Atlantic — but each festival will also feature a core roster of 11 VIP brewers and one brewers alliance hand-picked by the team at Sierra. The lucky 11 brewers are: 3 Floyds, Allagash, Ballast Point, Bell’s, Cigar City, Firestone Walker, New Glarus, Ninkasi, Oskar Blues, Russian River and Victory. The alliance? That would be our own Asheville Brewers Alliance.

While the breweries will be pouring their beers at our own festival down in Mills River, Sierra Nevada wanted to give folks a chance to bring the party home. So, on Friday, July 18, local stores will receive a limited quantity of 12-packs featuring those 12 beers.

The pack is set to retail somewhere in the neighborhood of $25, and it’s not often you can get 12 beers from 12 different breweries of this caliber for that sort of price. (The average mix-a-six in town costs $9.99.)

The variety of beers included is also impressive. Allagash brewed a Belgian-style pale with their signature ability to coax intoxicating aromas from yeast. Firestone Walker, known for both their hoppy beers and their Pivo Pilsner, brewed a hopped-up Pilsner with Sierra Nevada’s proprietary hop torpedo. And of course Oskar Blues took a classic beer style, the bock, and put their own twist on it with a heavy dose of rye and fruity Ella hops.

As for our own alliance, they did us proud with Tater Ridge. The beer is a nod to Highland Brewing Co., who blazed the trail for all who followed here in WNC, and the strong agricultural traditions of our area. In addition to the malt, hops, yeast and water, the beer features sweet potatoes (roasted, in fact, by our own 12 Bones Smokehouse).

According to the distributor, you can look for this special 12-pack in most of the places where Sierra Nevada is normally sold —from specialty beer stores to grocery stores. Tickets to the main event on Aug. 3 are also still available here.

 

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About Thom O'Hearn
Thom O’Hearn is a writer, book editor and homebrewer. Twitter: @thomohearn

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