REVIEW: Stone/ 10 Barrel/ Blue Jacket Suede

Here in Lexington it seems we've skipped fall and gone straight from summer to winter. One day temperatures in the 70s and shorts, seemingly the next it's damn near freezing and I'm looking for my boots. Normally I would find such an abrupt change unwelcome. But when I've got big malty beers waiting in the fridge a good cold snap is just what the doctor ordered. Today's beer is another one of Stone's many collaborations. This time it's an imperial porter brewed with avocado honey, jasmine and calendula flowers and is brewed with help from Washington D.C.'s Blue Jacket Brewery and from Bend, Oregon, 10 Barrel Brewing. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone R&R Coconut IPA

Two wild brand new IPAs from Stone in as many posts? I must be doing something right. Today's beer, much like the last Stone collaboration beer I had (the fabulous and bizarre Dayman Coffee IPA), is borne of homebrewers. A couple of dudes, Robert Masterson and Ryan Reschan, won Stone's recent American Homebrewers Association contest and won the right to have their beer brewed at Stone with a little help from Paul Sangster and Guy Shobe of Rip Current Brewing. That's a pretty rad prize if I do say so myself. So a big west coast IPA brewed with an irresponsible amount of hops and hearty additions of toasted coconut? Sounds awesome. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone 17th Anniversary Götterdämmerung IPA

I've been excited to try this beer ever since it was announced. You guys all know I'm a bit of a hop head. I love them all, east coast, west coast, English style, Belgian style, dry hopped, wet hopped, black IPAs, white IPAs, wheat IPAs, double IPAs, triple IPAs, barrel aged IPAs, even coffee IPAs, but never in my entire life have I had a German style IPA. As we all know the IPA originates out of English brewing tradition. It has become widely accepted by American brewers and has become one of the most popular beer styles in the world. But leave it to those devious bastards at Stone to take the IPA in a direction heretofore unknown to me. A beer brewed entirely with German pilsner malt and a host of German hops that checks in at 9.5% ABV and a beastly 102 IBUs. I can't wait. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone RuinTen

So, I've got a couple more north east beers from Trey to get to, but I accidentally left those notes in Lexington, I'm a mess, I know. But I've got plenty of beers to talk about so we're all good. The beer we're looking at today is a new Imperial IPA from Stone, Ruinten. Well, I guess it's not really a new beer at all. This beer was initially released last summer as Ruination Tenth Anniversary IPA. It was so well recieved that the're bringing it back now as simply, RuinTen. I'm pretty pumped because I missed out on the Ruination Tenth Anniversary IPA the first time around. I took a look at the original Ruination last summer and liked it quite a bit. Stone bills that one as, "A liquid poem to the glory of the hop." Ruinten however, they call "A stage dive into a mosh pit of hops" I think I like where this is headed. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone Espresso Imperial Russian Stout

I hinted the other day that If you knew how Stone handled their odd year limited releases that you might have an idea of what I was going to be taking a look at today. Well, here it is Stone's Imperial Russian Stout again! But this time brewed with copious amounts of espresso. On odd years. Stone tweaks the recipe for their IRS and their Old Guardian Barleywine. For example, this year's Old Guardian was made with smoked malt and oak aged, and in 2011 we had the Belgo Anise IRS (which I remember being pretty tasty!). It's very cool to see Stone really experiment and tweak these recipies. I'm a sucker for a big stout, any beer from stone, and a beer brewed with coffee. If ever a beer was a no brainer, it's this one. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone Imperial Russian Stout

I missed out on this one last year. Not that I didn't see it around at liquor stores and bottle shops, but for whatever reason, I wasn't feeling in the mood for a giant imperial stout when this hit stores last spring. Stone's IRS comes out every April, which is usually a time when I'm starting to think about pale ales, saison's, and such. Not big hearty stouts. Perhaps this is sort of the same thing I noticed when I talked about Great Divide's Wolfgang. A big hearty doppelbock that came out in June. Sort of counter-programming to all of the lighter spring-summer seasonals on the shelves. But anyway, what we have here, is a 10.6% 60 IBU beast of an imperial stout. Let's get into it. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone/ Aleman/ Two Brothers Dayman

I enjoy It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. It's never really been appointment viewing for me, but I enjoy it whenever I watch it. That's a long way of saying that I quite enjoy the name of this beer. I remember hearing about this beer quite a while ago when I watched this video from the Iron Brew Homebrew competition back in December. Well, I didn't have that video in my mind when I bought this bottle, but once I read the back of the label which talked about the origins of the beer I remembered back. So anyway, the guys at Aleman won the Iron Brew competition with their coffee IPA. Which combines two of my all time favorite beverages and sounds just bizarre enough to work. I'm very excited to try this one out. Let's not waste any more time. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stony Lukcy Basartd

So, many of you have probably had Stone's Arrogant Bastard. I cooked with it once. And you've probably had the Oaked Arrogant Bastard. I paired that one with food. There's even a chance that you've had the Double Bastard. All three of those beers are pretty tremendous. Today's beer is all of those beers at once, and something completely different at the same time. Lukcy Basartd is a blend of all three and A beer that I've been looking to try for some time now. I was able to snag a bottle at Dutch's and now I get to share my thoughts on it with you fine, respectable folks. To the beer!

Stone Enjoy By 11.09.12. IPA

I've had problems in the past with beers that I didn't enjoy fresh. Beers that I let sit too long in the fridge before I got to them. Often times enjoying fresh beer can be a difficult proposition. The expiration/ bottling date/ best before marks on beer are sometimes very small, tucked away in a corner, hard to read, or printed in some difficult to decipher code. That is not the case with today's beer. The best before date is right there, emblazoned in type so big, you'd have to be blind to miss it. Freshness is especially key in a big IPA like this because the alpha acids in the hops that provide all of that beautiful hop flavor  begin to break down almost immediately after bottling. Stone made a special effort and aligned specifically with their wholesalers to get this beer into bars and stores across the country less than a week after it was bottled and kegged. The first batch of Enjoy By got sent to Chicago, New Jersey, and Southern California. The second batch, to Colorado and Ohio and straight into my grubby hands. Tons of fascinating info about the brewing, the logistics of getting fresh beer across the country, and even how to vote to get Enjoy By to your state, can be found here. Let's see if those fresh hop flavors are all they're cracked up to be. To the beer!

Dogfish Head/ Stone/ Victory Saison du BUFF

Today's beer is a collaboration between not two, but three great breweries. Dogfish Head, Stone, and Victory got together to hatch up a recipe, and quite the interesting recipe too. Saison du BUFF (Brewers United for Freedom of Flavor) is a belgian style saison with an interesting twist, it's brewed with rosemary, sage, thyme, and parsley. The recipe was first brewed at Stone then later brewed at the other two breweries, the one I have here today is, obviously, from Dogfish Head. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone Smoked Porter w/ Vanilla Bean

Not really much interesting to say here for this one. I'm a big fan of Stone. I'm a big fan of smoked porters. I even tried to brew my own once, although I have a sneaking suspicion that this one here might just be a bit better than mine. Add real vanilla beans though? That's more than enough to get me to pull the trigger. To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone 16th Anniversary IPA

Back to one of my favorite breweries, Escondido California's Stone Brewing Company. Like many breweries, they celebrate their anniversary each year with the release of a new beer. Most of them are only released once and then never seen again. Although, their 11th Anniversary Ale was so popular that it is now brewed year round and goes by the name of Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale. The 16th Anniversary Ale is an imperial IPA brewed with lemon verbena, lemon oil, rye, and a mix of hop varieties including Amarillo and Calypso. It checks in at 10% ABV. To the beer!

Pairing Beer and Food

Trying something a bit different with today's post. My girlfriend, Meredith and I enjoy cooking together. Well, really we enjoy the eating, but the cooking can be fun too. This past weekend Meredith had it in mind to make a chicken dish using bourbon, peach preserves, and barbeque sauce and thought that we should try to pair some beer with it and that would make an interesting post for the blog. Now that's an idea I can absolutely get behind. To the beer, and the food!

REVIEW: Stone Ruination IPA

Alright, I've been doing a lot of Summer beers lately. It is Summer after all, feels appropriate. But it's time for me to get back to my wheelhouse. Stone calls this beer "A liquid poem to the glory of the hop." Now, if that doesn't sound right up my alley, I don't know what does. This is the first time I've tried this beer, but it's a beer that's been around for a while. Ten years in fact. To celebrate ten years of Ruination, Stone has just released a tenth anniversary version. Avery cool video about Ruination and it's tenth anniversary counterpart can be found here. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for a bomber of that. So how is the legendary Ruination? To the beer!

REVIEW: Stone Old Guardian Barleywine

The first time I had a barleywine I really didn't like it. It was at a beer tasting in Madison, Indiana when I was a junior at Hanover College. I don't even remember exactly which beer it was, just that I didn't care for it. It was weird. It didn't taste like a beer to me. Needless to say, in the intervening years my palate has become more refined and my tastes have changed. Barleywines are still far from my favorite beer style but I'm always excited to give them a shot. They're always big, complex, interesting beers. I also attribute my coming around on barleywines to some of the more hop forward varieties that I've had. Beers Like Avery's Hog Heaven and the recent Cincinnati Beer Week Barleywine are both great beers for folks looking to get into barleywines but who are more familiar with more of an IPA flavor profile. They are both big malty complex beers but the big hop presence sort of leads the way. Both are great beers and good gateways to the style. But enough about those, I'm not drinking either of those beers today. Today's barleywine comes from Stone, one of the greatest breweries in the world. At least if you ask me. Stone is known for huge beers. Beers that are big, assertive, highly flavorful, and complex. I'm excited to see what they have to say about the barleywine. To the beer!

Cooking With Beer

Well, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that two weeks ago I bottled my homebrewed smoked porter. It’s been sitting in those bottles carbonating the past couple weeks and the day when I can enjoy it is almost here. That day is not here yet, but more on that later. Since I was planning on popping the top on the first homebrew this past weekend my girlfriend Meredith and I decided to cook up a dinner to pair with the beer. The pairing of beer and food is something that we are both very interested in yet really know perilous little about. So, the quest began to find something that would be fun to cook that would pair well with a smoked porter.