The Great Estate

I have been noticing some chatter on the webs about Sierra Nevada's Chico Estate Harvest Ale. Chico Estate is an American style Pale Ale made with barley and hops grown at the brewery. I really like this idea a lot. This practice is very common with wine makers, but most craft brewers usually do not have the resources for this kind of set up. It is often more cost effective to purchase the ingredients to make beer, instead of growing the ingredients and making the beer. When the Great Hops Shortage of 2007 was announced, I started wondering what would happen if breweries started growing their own hops. A few breweries did in fact starting growing hops, but Sierra Nevada took it one step further and grew their own barley.

Part of the chatter surrounding Chico Estate is the cost. It comes in a 24 oz bottle and will run about $10-$12. To some that may seem a little steep for a 6.7% ABV American Pale Ale.  Bill Manly from Sierra Nevada commented on this at BeerAdvocate

After basic, back-of-the-napkin math, we estimate that our rough costs work out to about $150-200 per pound of hops. Hop shortage or no, them's some steep cones.
Last month during the harvest we had about 20 people working 8-hour days in the hops field. Granted these are not migrant workers making 4 bucks an hour...these are our QA lab scientists and analysts, trained brewers and brewery support staff. People who have been working at the brewery for years. The labor alone is a killer!
The barley is no joke either, the tending and the storage alone, not to mention the malting and transportation costs.
I realize this beer is on the pricey side for Sierra Nevada. But its also an experiment in beer that has never, ever been tried. As the process smooths out the costs will eventually go down, but that's an awfully long return on investment.
Generally speaking our Harvest beers...as well as Estate, are loss leaders.
We never make money...it's just a matter of how much we're willing to lose.
I realize also that times are tight, and after all, it is beer, not oxygen.
It's not like we're greedy or gouging as a brewery. Look at the comments for Torpedo... For all our beers we charge the lowest possible fair price.
If you can buy a bottle or two, great. If you can get a buddy and split one, great. If you can't make it happen, we understand.

That makes perfect sense to me, and puts the business of beer into perspective.  I figure this is the same as paying a little extra for organic or locally grown food.  Hell, craft beer drinkers are already used to paying a little extra for quality. 

The big question then is if it's good enough to purchase, and I would say yes.  Every craft beer drinker should be familiar with Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale.  For many, this was the gateway beer to craft beer.  Estate is better.  It is a super clean and fresh pale ale, very easy to drink.  Hops are more green and piney compared to the sharp citric hops of the Pale Ale.  The malt is more pronounced in the Estate, more crystalline-like.  I really wanted more than the 24 oz.  As a first time experiment, I would call it a success.  I'm hoping to find more, but they are disappearing from the shelves.