brew dog blog

A few weeks ago Stone, a perennial favorite of mine, did a bit of market testing in New York. They brought kegs of Levitation, a session ale, to ten beer bars in the area and were looking to see if a 4.5% session beer was a viable product in this market. Most breweries don’t worry about whether or not people are going to drink their session beer, but Stone isn’t most breweries. Now one of America’s largest craft breweries they have built a reputation as building some of the most bitter, unbalanced, strong and generally fucked up beers in the world.

The twelfth anniversary continues this grand tradition. There’s nothing like coming home after a long day of work, in horrendous heat and humidity and being excited to pour a 9.2% stout brewed with oats and bitter chocolate. So exciting I drank this just below room temp, so about 60 degrees. It pours a deep midnight black with one of the darkest heads I have ever seen. Huge aroma of cocoa. At first you taste nothing but big cocoa with some sweet malt. Then the hops creep in to play with the dry dust cocoa flavors and then about five minutes later you notice how hot this beer is.

I’m horribly sensitive to fusel alcohols. Rubbing alcohol, nail polish remover if it’s there at all I notice it and it drives me crazy and distracts me from whatever merits a particular brew might have. One of the major accusations thrown at Stone is that their beer are in addition to being wildly unbalanced (some say undrinkable) that they are horribly fusel. I’ve never really had a problem with this from any of their beers and I think I know why now. All of the qualifiers in the name of the Twelfth anniversary are there to distract you from what the beer is actually about. This beer is a paean to the flavor alcohol itself. It’s pretty clean but it is very present in the nose and the flavor of this beer. You aren’t overwhelmed by the smell of nail polish remover but this beer almost smells like a glass of spirits. Truly unique and I’m extremely curious where this beer is going in years to come. Buy a case and drink a few now and then forget about ‘em in five years. When you decide to remember about them give me a call and we’ll crack open a few more.

PS- They do make a hell of a session beer.