Jolly Pumpkin / Solo / Stone "Special Golden Holiday Ale"
Series 14 of 14
The multi-year journey of this beer began in 2006 at the Craft Brewers Conference in Seattle when our own Greg Koch met and first became friends with Ron Jeffries, Brewmaster of the famed Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. In 2007, on a trip to Tokyo, Greg by chance encountered Kjetil Jikuin of Norway’s Nøgne-Ø brewery and formed another new friendship. 2008 found Ron, Kjetil and our team creating a beer that became known as The Special Holiday Ale. The following year found versions created in Norway, and Michigan, the former captured in a documentary called “Stone Skips Across The Pond” (still available online, and also featuring a stop at the then-2-year-old BrewDog). Fast forward to the present and the trio have come together again. However, as the saying goes, “Nothing stays the same,” and we find that Kjetil has moved to Crete and started Solo Brewing there. And as life brings change, the brewing team felt that with this special opportunity to honor the creation of Stone Berlin with this Collaboration, the beer should change too. After a multi-year history of brewing iterations in California, Michigan and Norway, this version was brewed for the first time in Berlin. It’s inspired by the original versions, but delightfully different.