Stone Brewing will debut their first sour/wild ale in December.
For the last two years Stone Brewing – known worldwide for their love of hoppy beers, has been quietly designing a wild ale program. As many breweries across the United States are debuting sour ale programs, Stone seemed content with what they do best. IPAs. As you can imagine, this announcement takes the brewery’s fan base by surprise.
Stone’s Mission Warehouse production facility has been churning out barrel-aged and small-batch beers for some time now. The brewery decided that Mission is home base for future “arrogant” sour ales.
Stone Mission Warehouse Apricot is the inaugural release. The base beer was soured, then blended with barrel-aged barleywine and a strong, highly-hopped tripel. Those two threads were aged on three different strains of Brettanomyces yeast. To top it all off, Stone shoved 500 pounds of peaches into the 4 oak barrels used to age this new release. The process took 18 months to complete.
Stone Mission Warehouse Sour is on sale now through Eventbrite. 4-packs of Apricot must be picked up at Stone’s company store in Escondido, Liberty Station or Pasadena from December 3 through 31st.
Style: American Wild Ale (w/ Apricots. Oak Aged.)
Availability: 11.2oz Bottles
Debut: December 2017
8.7% ABV
Image: Stone Brewing
Not surprising at all. They have been brewing sours and serving at their San Diego area restaurants for quite a while.