Following their 2012 Iron Brew Competition, Stone Brewing Co. will be pairing up with Chicago’s Aleman Brewing and Illinois Two Brother’s Brewing to create their 2013 collaboration beer Dayman Coffee IPA. The winning beer recipe is a coffee Continue Reading →
Stone Brewing Co’s Vertical Epic 12.12.12 marks the end of an era. The series, spanning more than a decade, was quite a game changer if you think about it. They were cellaring beer before it became Continue Reading →
2013 marks another odd year, and that means another Odd Year Release for Stone Brewing Co. A few years ago, the brewery decided to release a special take on a couple of tried and true favorites for odd Continue Reading →
A little beer film noir. Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø of Evil Twin Brewing narrates this shorty about the new collaboration featuring himself, Brian Strumke of Stillwater Artisanal Ales, and Mitch Steele of Stone Brewing Co. The beer is a smoked black saison. 6.8% Continue Reading →
Stone’s paragon of Liquid Arrogance — Double Bastard is back. The American strong ale, chock full of hops. (and booze). Technically already on the shelves for a lot of you.
Stone Brewing Co. (Escondido, CA) released Lukcy Basartd in 2010 to mark the 13th year of Stone’s Arrogant Bastard strong ale. This “cuvee de Bastard.” is a blend of Arrogant Bastard, Oaked Arrogant Bastard, and Double Bastard into one bold beer.
Following their 2012 Iron Brew Competition, Stone Brewing Co. will be pairing up with Chicago’s Aleman Brewing and Illinois Two Brother’s Brewing to create their 2013 collaboration beer Dayman Coffee IPA. The winning beer recipe is a coffee IPA and will feature coffee beans roasted by Aleman and Two Brothers with the beer itself being brewed at Stone’s headquarters in California.
Jim Moorehouse, Nate Albrecht and Brad Zeller, three pals planning to open a Chicago brewpub under the moniker of Aleman, won first place at last year’s Iron Brew homebrewing competition in the Windy City (judged by none other than Greg Koch,Jason Ebel of Two Brothers Brewing, and celebrated Chicago brewer, designer and author Randy Mosher). Their style-bending IPA artfully married the assertive tropical bite of Citra hops with amazing coffee flavor and aromatics to create something truly unique and exceptional. Serendipitously, Two Brothers recently kicked off a new adventure roasting their own coffee beans, and provided just-in-time freshly roasted lava for the brew. The result is an innovative IPA that’s well balanced and intensely flavored thanks to the felicitous blend of hops and fresh roasted coffee. “
Stone Brewing Co’s Vertical Epic 12.12.12 marks the end of an era. The series, spanning more than a decade, was quite a game changer if you think about it. They were cellaring beer before it became popular. This edition of VE was pilot batched 8 times before getting to the recipe below. Homebrewers, take a crack at it. This is the all grain recipe. With musical numbers to go along with it.
Grain Bill
Pale Malt — 58%
Light Crystal (15°L) — 13.5%
Medium Crystal (60°L) — 11.5%
Vienna Malt — 9.5%
Midnight Wheat Malt — 7.5%
Dark Candi Sugar — 3.5% of total grain weight
NOTE: As always, I am only providing the all grain version of the recipe, and just percentages so that you can figure out the weights based on the size of your brewing system and your normal efficiencies.
Spices added to mash:
Cinnamon Stick, broken/ground — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Ground Allspice — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Ground Cloves — 0.0125 oz per gallon (0.36 grams/gallon)
Sweet Orange Peel — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Rosehips — 0.025 oz per gallon (0.71 grams/gallon)
Make the spice additions on the basis of brew length (gallons wort recovered). Note that the orange peel is sweet orange peel, not Curacao or bitter orange peel. Rosehips should be purchased ground, not whole, as whole rosehips are very difficult to crush (we had to use a fork-truck to do it)!
Target OG: 22°P (1.088 SG).
Musical Selection: First up are some classics from the box set Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968: “Sugar and Spice” by The Cryin’ Shames. Follow that with “Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice” by Mouse and The Traps, “Falling Sugar” by The Palace Guard and, finally, “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love” by The Swingin’ Medallions. These songs just seem to fit, given the ingredients we are using in this beer!
If you haven’t listened to this 4 disc box set, keep it playing. It’s amazing. Let it all hang out, man. Groovy.
Mashing
Use a 60-minute conversion rest at 154°F. This is a fairly high conversion rest temperature that should provide enough body to balance the spices, hops and roasted malt characters in the finished beer.
If you can, raise your mash temperature up to 165°F after conversion rest to stop the enzymatic conversion of starches to sugars before lautering. If you cannot raise the temperature in your mash, reduce the conversion rest from 60 to 30-45 minutes.
Lautering
Recirculate your wort gently from the bottom over the top of the mash to deposit the fine particles of malt on the top of the grain and to “set” your bed. Avoid splashing the wort. Recirculate for 5-15 minutes, depending on your system, before diverting wort flow to your kettle/boiling vessel. You should remove almost all the malt particles from the wort flow, but some haze is OK.
Start sparging in the lauter when the wort level is about a ½-inch above the grain bed. Starting earlier will decrease your efficiency because the water will dilute your first wort. Sparge water should be between 165°F and 170°F to maximize extraction, but avoid going over 170°F or you’ll extract harsh compounds from the malt husks.
Sparge until you hit your target boil volume or until the wort gravity being drawn off reaches 3°P (1.012 SG), whichever comes first. Don’t lauter past 3°P, because when the sparged wort coming off the lauter is that low in sugar content, you risk extracting tannins and other harsh character from the malt husks.
Be careful not to rush the mashing and lautering step or your brewing efficiency will go down. These steps should be done with care. A good music selection will assist in keeping things relaxed and gentle during lautering.
Music Selection: I always like to listen to J.J. Cale during lautering. Something about his laid back vocals and front porch blues approach has always appealed to me. He’s a great songwriter and a guitar maestro. If you don’t know JJ Cale, he wrote some true classics like “After Midnight”, “Call Me The Breeze” and “Cocaine”. His style has influenced Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler and countless others. JJ Cale now lives in California, somewhat near our brewery, another reason to celebrate his great music. Recommended listening is Anyway the Wind Blows, a two disc retrospective, or The Road to Escondido, a collaboration done with Eric Clapton.
Boil
Hop Bill:
0.15 oz per gallon (4.2 grams/gallon) Simcoe Hop Pellets (13% alpha) at the start of the boil.
0.20 oz per gallon (5.6 grams/gallon) EACH Tettnang (4.5% Alpha acid) and Willamette (5.5% alpha acid). Added 30 minutes prior to end of boil.
Spice additions (hung in a weighted down mesh bag):
Cinnamon — 0.009 oz per gallon (0.24 grams/gallon)
Nutmeg — 0.009 oz per gallon (0.24 grams/gallon)
Clove — 0.0045 oz per gallon (0/12 grams/gallon)
Boil for 90 minutes.
Music Selection: Alright, your brewing area should now have the aromas of holiday baking wafting tantalizingly through the house (or garage, or brewery). What better way to celebrate than to throw on some Christmas music? Yes, we realize Christmas has passed, but just as good Christmas beers taste perfectly fine in July, good holiday music can be listened to any time of the year. I recommend the following albums, these are some of my holiday favorites:Christmas with the Smithereens,Season’s Greetings from Moe and A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. Hey, nothing says Christmas like The Smithereens!
Whirlpool
Spice additions-add at the start of the whirlpool process:
Cinnamon — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Clove — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Sweet Orange Peel — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Allspice — 0.22 oz per gallon (0.6 grams/gallon)
Admittedly somewhat unusual for Stone, we did not hop this brew in the whirlpool. With the influence of the spices, we wanted to keep the hop presence well blended. Massive flavor hopping in the whirlpool may have clashed with the aromatic spice flavors.
The whirlpool step is where you separate out your proteinaceous trub. It’s going to be a large trub pile with all these spices, though the lack of hops should help enhance your wort recovery.
Music Selection: One of my favorite new bands is The Sheepdogs from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Influenced by early 1970s classic rock, I think they creatively blend elements of The Allman Brothers Band, The Guess Who, The Grateful Dead and early Grand Funk Railroad. They groove and they rock with great guitar work, strong songwriting and fantastic vocal harmonies. Check ‘em out.
Fermentation
Yeast Addition
Pitch a Belgian yeast strain, enough to get 20-25 million cells per milliliter (requires a starter). We used the Wyeast High Gravity Trappist yeast for this brew, the first time we’ve ever used this yeast. This yeast produced a lot of banana character, especially at a 68°F fermentation temperature. The banana esters combined well with the dark malt and dark candy sugar flavors, giving the beer a bit of a chocolate-banana dessert flavor.
After the trub has been separated from the wort, chill the wort using an immersion chiller or a heat exchanger to about 65 °F. Add enough yeast to get a cell count of about 20-25 million cells per milliliter. We like to use a higher pitching rate (yeast addition rate) here, because we wanted to ferment at a lower temperature but still ensure the beer ferments out completely. This means that you will most likely have to build up your yeast culture at home using a starter.
Music Selection: By the time you are pitching, your brew day is just about complete. I think “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones would be a great way to cap off this final epic brew day! “May be the last time, but I don’t know!” Alternative choice: Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly… just because! I like them!
So there you have it — the final homebrew recipe for the final edition of the Stone Vertical Epic Ale series. I hope those of you who have been brewing these recipes have enjoyed the experience as much as we have enjoyed brewing the beers here at the brewery. It’s been my pleasure and honor to supply you, our valued fans and brewing enthusiasts, with the last seven recipes.
2013 marks another odd year, and that means another Odd Year Release for Stone Brewing Co. A few years ago, the brewery decided to release a special take on a couple of tried and true favorites for odd years. That resulted in Belgo Anise Imperial Russian Stout, and Old Guardian Belgo Barleywine. The newest treatment for the coming odd year is Old Guardian Oak Smoked Barleywine, featuring German smoked wheat malt. Greg Koch (Founder) writes you a letter on the bottle.
It’s the Friday after Turkey Day. In the US anyhow. Not here in Belize, but I had turkey yesterday all the same. Raised in the Belize countryside by German Mennonites no less. It was delicious. Gotta respect those who are focused on doing things the right way, which more and more in this world often means with less technology rather than more. The bananas are better here, too. Mostly because they’re picked ripe and ready for local consumption, ratherthan pre-ripe and green to ship off to the US and other far-flung countries only to be ethylene-gassed once they arrive to finish off the ripening process. Sudden flashback of when we visited our friends James & Martin @Brewdog in Scotland for our collaboration beer a few years ago called bashah (don’t think I ever spilled the beans formally before that the name is an acronym for black as sin, hoppy as hell). We had dinner at a great little restaurant in Aberdeen that historically was a banana-hanging warehouse. Later, they ended up buying the place. We actually shot a really cool video: [link) Back to the moment and Belize.Just finished a Crime. Great way to start the last night here. Now, as tradition dictates for the OG label, I’m having some 2012 Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine. Sitting at a beach bar & sharing w/John & Barbara Cheek from Oakhurst (Decatur, GA). They regularly enjoy Stone IPA at their local haunts, Steinbeck’s and The Marlay. Got to know them a little today as we were on the same little boat going out to snorkel with the sea turtles. Yes, a bit ‘touristy’ for me, as I typically head a little more off the beaten path, but hell, it was kinda cool swimming with them all the same. Swimming in the ocean made my hair quite scraggly lit’s still rather mucked up from the whole red-hair fundraiser we did back in August), and with the headband I picked up two days ago at a local shop, I’ve gotta admit that I’m looking a bit laughably trustafarian. It’s like I became an overnight pseudo-beach bum. Heh, if only. Not really my thing though, honestly. I’m a bit higher strung than that. The driven/agenda type. Gotta change the world, rather than watch it float by. But then you knew that. Save now. It’s been a ‘float’ week. Nice to visit the float lifestyle every once in a while, but I wouldn’t want to live there. Cracked a Stone Enjoy By 12.21.12 IPA just now. That’s a beer to encourage the ‘watch the world float by” if there ever was one.The aroma is certainly suggestive of that lifestyle, now isn’t it? I’ll leave it at that. Loving it. Brought two cases of assorted 22oz & 500m1 bottles on the trip. The 12.21.12 is the next-to-last, w/Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale bringing up the rear. So to speak. It’s actually not legal to bring in beer to this country as their beer laws are rather protectionist. That serves no one, except a few. Nonetheless, I swallowed my bubbling outrage as I learned this at Customs on my way in and politely asked to speak with a supervisor. I said “Hi, I’m Greg and I own a small brewery in the US, and) like to travel w/beer to share w/people I meet. I certainly don’t mind paying a duty.” He surveyed me, then the beer, then me again and decided that my two cases “didn’t represent a commercial threat” and calc’ed out a modest duty for me to pay. I did so gladly. Now I’m at the end of the visit, and reflecting on the fact that all went quite nicely thank-you- C. very-much. Thankful for the brief respite. Time to get back to it next week. Lots to do. Lots to do.
Style:Barleywine (Smoked, Oak Aged) Availability: 22oz bottles, Draft. Arrival: TBA
Beer Goes Film Noir with “The Perfect Crime” [VIDEO]
A little beer film noir. Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø of Evil Twin Brewing narrates this shorty about the new collaboration featuring himself, Brian Strumke of Stillwater Artisanal Ales, and Mitch Steele of Stone Brewing Co. The beer is a smoked black saison. 6.8% ABV, 60 IBUs
Stone’s paragon of Liquid Arrogance — Double Bastard is back. The American strong ale, chock full of hops. (and booze). Technically already on the shelves for a lot of you.
For those label lovers:
Warning: Double Bastard Ale is not to be wasted on the tentative or weak. Only the Worthy are invited, and then only at your own risk. If you have even a modicum of hesitation, DO NOT buy this bottle. Instead, leave it for a Worthy soul who has already matriculated to the sublime ecstasy of what those in the know refer to as “Liquid Arrogance.”
This is one lacerative muther of an ale. It is unequivocally certain that your feeble palate is grossly inadequate and thus undeserving of this liquid glory…and those around you would have little desire to listen to your resultant whimpering. Instead, you slackjawed gaping gobemouche, slink away to that pedestrian product that lures agog the great unwashed with the shiny happy imagery of its silly broadcast propaganda. You know, the one that offers no challenge, yet works very, very hard to imbue the foolhardy with the absurd notion that they are exercising ‘independent’ thought, or attempts to convey the perception it is in some way ‘authentic’ or ‘original.’ It’s that one that makes you feel safe and delectates you into basking in the warm, fuzzy, and befuddled glow of your own nescience. Why so many allow themselves to be led by the nose lacks plausible explanation. Perhaps you have been so lulled by the siren song of ignorance that you don’t even notice your white-knuckle grip on it. You feel bold and unique, but alas are nothing but sheep, willingly being herded to and fro. If you think you are being piqued in this text, it is nothing when compared to the insults we are all asked to swallow streaming forth from our televisions and computers. Truth be told, you are being coddled into believing you are special or unique by ethically challenged “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” marketers who layer (upon layer) imagined attributes specifically engineered to lead you by the nose. Should you decide to abdicate your ability to make decisions for yourself, then you are perhaps deserving of the pabulum they serve. Double Bastard Ale calls out the garrulous caitiffs who perpetrate the aforementioned atrocities and demands retribution for their outrageously conniving, intentionally misleading, blatantly masturbatory and fallacious ad campaigns. We demand the unmitigated, transparent truth. We demand forthright honesty. We want justice! Call ‘em out and line ‘em up against the wall… NOW.
Style: American Strong Ale
Availability: 22oz bombers, 3 Liter BIG bottles, Draft.
Stone Brewing Co.(Escondido, CA) releasedLukcy Basartd in 2010 to mark the 13th year of Stone’s Arrogant Bastard strong ale. This “cuvee de Bastard.” is a blend of Arrogant Bastard, Oaked Arrogant Bastard, and Double Bastard into one bold beer.
Style:American Strong Ale (blended) Availability: 22oz Bombers. Draft. All markets where Stone is sold.
