Several Stone “firsts” are evident in this beer. It’s our first time using Sorachi Ace and Motueka hops (newer, intensely-flavored hop varieties from Japan and New Zealand), our first time using mash hopping and first wort hopping, and our first time using more than two kettle hop additions (we actually had 10 additions throughout the wort boiling process). Perhaps most significantly, this is the…
Truly a collaborative beer, I want to thank everyone who went above and beyond to help:
- Our Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens overnight team for toasting 1,000 lbs. of coconut to a perfect golden brown. You all rock!
- Our Stone Brew Crew, especially Tom, Kevin, Chris and Sean, for all the last minute ingredient preparation (grinding, bagging, and placement in…
When Ron, Kjetil, and I started communicating about our collaborative beer, we knew going in that we wanted to make a great beer for the holidays. That was about it. Greg spoke highly of Kjetil’s Holiday Ale that he tried on a recent trip to Norway, so we used that as starting point, and started e-mailing. We quickly decided to try and use one indigenous ingredient from each of our brewing…
This is a story of how a collaboration brew with–IMO–two of the greatest breweries on this planet initially began with a “fizzy yellow beer.” It all started in Denmark in the late 90’s when a group of friends and I started going to a bar in our neighborhood that sold a bucket of imported beers. My first love was (yikes) an American fizzy yellow beer......Well, things have changed since..... We…
To many of us who have lived in the coastal valleys of California, the words “El Camino Real” conjure up images of golden hills, California sunsets, and oak, eucalyptus and pepper trees. Offering a glimpse into what many feel is the “real” California, the El Camino Real wends through the state’s coastline, mountains, fertile farming valleys, and traffic-heavy urban and suburban areas. And of…
I'm with two old friends, and my fingers reek of rosemary. Bill, Sam & I just finished picking the "Estate Rosemary" for our collaborative Saison du BUFF. It'll go into the brew in about a half hour—along with the other herbs—and in the meantime we're all sitting like kids in detention writing our labels. Good times. Seriously. We're having a great time catching up. Other than the many times…
Stone brewers Drew Neldon and Steve Via won this year’s annual in-house Stone Spotlight Series brewing competition with this hefty brown ale—an impressive result considering that one of them had never encountered a brown ale he liked before tasting this one. Given layers of flavor from Vienna, Victory and Chocolate Wheat malts, and warming, refined sweetness from Honey Malt and turbinado sugar,…
Originally dreamt up by homebrewers Robert Masterson and Ryan Reschan, who earned themselves the top prize in our 2013 American Homebrewers Association homebrewing contest, this innovative beer marks a refreshing sea change for IPA lovers everywhere. It was brewed with 280 pounds of coconut and an unusual blend of hop varieties, including a few from faraway lands or just brand spankin' new, and…
In 2006, Chris Carroll, a longtime member of Team Stone, took that adage literally, proposing that we produce a one-off version of our venerable Stone Smoked Porter made spicy from the addition of chipotle peppers. We gave it a shot and found that those smoked jalapeños melded quite naturally with the smoldery peat-smoked malt that gives the beer its flavor and moniker, creating a deep, roasty…
We decided early on that we wouldn’t do seasonal beers for the sake of doing seasonal beers. For us, beer comes first, much as Stone Smoked Porter came first. Actually, it came second, oddly enough, in the form of a seasonal. But rather than relegating fans to nine peat-smoked-porterless months, we made it a year-round release. Nowadays, we brew a trio of tasty takes on this smoky, sultry…
