Editor’s Note: This column is sponsored by Georgetown Square Wine and Beer (10400 Old Georgetown Road).
This column was written by Georgetown Square Wine and Beer customer Garrett Cruce. Follow his beer travels on Instagram.
In San Diego, there is a brewery that’s no stranger to even casual fans of craft beer – Stone Brewing Co. The folks there started operations in 1996 under the leadership of Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, brewing roughly 400 barrels that year.
In 2013, after years of growing its brand and its lineup, the brewery’s output grew to 530 times that of its inaugural year.
Stone Brewing Co. has grown so much that it’s about to become the first American craft brewery to open a brewery in Europe with plans for a Berlin expansion.
That high volume is what allows us the chance to savor their extreme craft brews. There’s a reason Stone Brewing Co.’s beers have names like Ruination and Arrogant Bastard — the brewery is serious about rocking your palate.
I can’t get enough of their extreme brews and neither can many others as their increasing number of limited beers fly off shelves. Getting your hands on the latest release, be it a special recipe in honor of a friend (Matt’s Burning Rosids) or a brewery collaboration like the current Unapologetic IPA, can feel like a status buy.
But in the end, it’s all about the amazing flavor:
Stone Saison 6%
This spring-to-summer traditional Belgian style is anything but traditional tasting. Stone started brewing this seasonal in April 2014 using spices and lemon from the farm that it bought in 2011.
The first thing that hits you as you bring the glass up for a drink is a tart lemon and pepper aroma. The flavor starts off pleasantly sour from the lemon rinds with a sweet spice derived from the special yeast used in saisons. The sourness continues along with the pepper into the throat as you swallow. This is a must-try for fans of Belgians and American craft beers alike.
Stone Stochasticity Project Quadrotriticale 9.3%
Stone’s Stochasticity Project is an incubator for combining exotic ingredients with recipes that push the envelope of brewing.
This Belgian Quadrupel turns the style on its head by forgoing common grains in favor of triticale — the hybrid wheat and rye grain. The result is a caramel and cereal aroma with a similarly sweet cereal flavor. It’s rounded out by the typical banana flavor created by Belgian yeast. The sweetness is less prominent than in traditional Quadrupels thanks to the triticale grain, which combines the qualities of wheat with the dryness of rye. Any hops are appropriately downplayed.
Stone Go To IPA 4.5%
Stone released this session beer — a low-alcohol beer — for the first time in 2014 and immediately made it a part of its year- round releases. The aroma is almost solely of pine with a slight citrus to keep the pine tame. The flavor, however, is primarily citrus with a pine finish. Because of the low alcohol, there is none of the sweetness that you might find with other IPAs, especially imperial or double IPAs. Enjoy a couple of these guilt-free.
Beachwood/Stone/Heretic Unapologetic IPA 8.8%
Stone’s collaboration brews are becoming a wildly anticipated part of its release schedule.
This double IPA covers new ground as brewers blended the newest hop varieties (Azacca and Belma) with some hops that don’t even have names yet. Like the Quadrotriticale, this beer is ahead of its time — unapologetically.
The aroma is pretty balanced between pine resin and stone fruit, like peaches. The flavor gets interesting with a complex combo of fruit (more concord grape or berry than citrus) and pine that is tempered by the sweetness from the malt.
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