It is truly amazing how definitive and noticeable a color can be. I’m not speaking of just any color, but a specific color, Pantone 362U.

It’s been said that smell is the most evocative sense, but sometimes sight can also bring to mind a flood of memories. The particular shade of green that is Pantone 362U sends my memory straight to an aroma, a taste, an experience: that touch of crystal malt, the grapefruity scent, the literally thousands of times I popped the cap on a bottle. Ah, old friend, let’s just spend some time together. We don’t even need to talk all that much. And of course I remember the first time we met, back in 1985, the first time Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was available outside of California, the brewery having just moved to the 20^th St. location.

By the time I had that first Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, I was already well-versed in the ways of beers-that-don’t-taste-like-industrolagers. At 13, my father brought home a 6-pack of Anchor Steam, a beer he fell in love with while staying at the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco during frequent business trips between 1968 and 1973. He was astonished that I liked it, because after all, it was quite bitter for its day.

A trip to Germany and Austria four years later confirmed my appreciation of good beer, a quality that landed me a job at an early beer bar while attending the University of Texas at Austin. I started reading all I could for information on beers I might like – in the times before the internet, before brewspapers, almost before communication had evolved beyond seven different grunts and smoke signals – and one brewery mentioned frequently early on was Sierra Nevada.

Finally, in 1985, we started hearing from one of our distributors that they were going to carry Sierra. I couldn’t wait. I was home for the summer and went to a local mall to buy tickets for a later movie showing, stopping afterwards at a deli with ‘99 bottles of beer.’

A gentleman was there offering samples of new beer and I happily availed myself of the opportunity. He was amazed that I had already heard of the beer, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, of course, and we chatted for a bit after I had ordered a bottle. The gentleman’s name was Paul Camusi,

After Ken Grossman wrote his book Beyond the Pale in 2013, I was speaking with him at the brewery and mentioned that I had met his former partner “back in the day,” to which he responded, “Chris, there’s no way you met Paul.” I recounted the story and he stared at me in astonishment, recalling that Camusi had opened up a couple of new markets for the brewery, Houston having been one of them.

Whenever I go to Chico, California to visit the brewery, Pale Ale is always my first beer. If you come to my house, the beer drawer always has Sierra Pale. In 2019, while on a one hundred mile rafting trip on the Salmon River, with no cell coverage and little civilization, we made a mid-voyage stop at a hunting lodge with a small shop. They had a minimal beer selection, but they did have Sierra Pale. I bought a six-pack and cracked a can minutes later while floating on the river, chalking up another Sierra memory.