Creature Comforts x Sierra Nevada A Force For Good

Some of my favorite beer industry collaborations are those that bring together an iconic brewery steeped in the lore and history of the industry with a younger and more nimble beer purveyor better known for experimentation or novelty. The resulting collaboration beers tend to feel like the best of both worlds—two ethos meeting at a happy medium. Masters of consistency and nuance, pushed outside their comfort zone. Bold experimenters, reined in from ever taking things too far into the realm of excess. That’s more or less what I’m expecting, when I see a collaboration between two companies like Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and Creature Comforts Brewing Co.

Sierra Nevada, well, it’s not like they need an introduction. The company, which also announced the public release of the first whiskey distilled from its beer recently, is perhaps the most widely beloved brewery of its era. And Athens, GA’s Creature Comforts is really not all that far behind in terms of recognition these days, even if its beer still doesn’t make it to nearly as many states. Beloved for their flagship IPA Tropicalia and dozens of other beers besides, they’re known for adventurous, curiosity driven wild ales and barrel-aged beers. But it was the description of this latest one, A Force For Good, which really sold me.

A Force For Good is an entry in Creature’s charitable Get Comfortable series, which provides 100% of its profits to local programs “designed to channel the generosity of many toward the Athens, GA community’s most pressing needs.” To this end, they’ve brewed a new imperial brown ale with Sierra Nevada, weighing in at a gaudy 12.8% ABV. This beer was then conditioned in Jamaican rum barrels, and was further aged on Brazilian Amburana wood, which has been an object of novelty in the beer community for a few years now. Amburana is also known as Brazilian oak, and has some interesting properties—most notably, the fact that it can contribute some intensely spicy and rich characteristics to spirits and beer, with baking spice notes that are so strong that they often seem like actual dry spices rather than simply wood. Combined with the rum barrel and imperial brown ale, this was something I quite wanted to taste. So let’s get to it!

On the nose, A Force For Good presents a beguiling combination of beer, spirit and wood influences. The moment I cracked the can was an odd experience—I got a literal whiff of Jamaican rum, in a way I’ve never really associated even with rum barrel-aged beer before. It was such a specific, varietal characteristic that it was like I was sniffing a bottle of Appleton or Hampden Estates, full over overripe fruit and hogo, the Jamaican term for an aged rum’s pleasantly funky profile.