Brewery – Sierra Nevada
Beer – Otra Vez
Style – Gose
ABV – 4.5%
IBUs – 5
Otra Vez means “another time,” and for Sierra Nevada that time is early California when beers were made from local ingredients. The brewery trialed various native produce searching for great flavors. Prickly pear cactus flourishes in the state’s arid deserts, and grapefruit fills the Central Valley’s flats. Together their fruity-tangy blend makes Otra Vez, whose tartness is true to the gose style, pop with character.
The story of Sierra Nevada’s Otra Vez is a long one. You wouldn’t think that it would take so much time to craft a perfect refreshing beer, but it does.
Sierra Nevada didn’t want to mess around when they were crafting this, and because of that they brewed several test batches a week for nearly a year. After more than 100 different recipes, they finally hit gold with a happy little accident that yielded the perfect results. The lacto strain that they ended up going with was one that had inadvertently infected a yeast sample in the brewery. After isolating the strain, they knew it was the winner.
The brewery has said that the hardest part of development of Otra Vez was finding a balance between the tartness and the salinity, while still managing to keep the bacteria from getting to funky.
This beer made its presence known when it launched in January of 2016, and as the weather warmed up, it quickly moved itself up the favorites lists of brewers all across the country. It uses a nice dose of salt, coriander, prickly pear cactus fruit and Grapefrult to set itself up for pure sometime joyfullness.
My Thoughts On Sierra Nevada Otra Vez
Light colored, straw yellow with a thin white head on top, Otra Vez has aromas of dusty, floral, grassy notes.
The taste is bright, and refreshing. The tart kick of the flavor only helps push the refreshing personality of the beer to another level. It’s certainly a homerun if refreshing was the goal of this beer.