Stone Brewing Co To Lengthen "Enjoy By" Dates

It's been a big week for beer. Not only has Lagunitas made that announcement, but over at Stone Brewing Co, Greg Koch announced that he is to step down as CEO of the company (link here, with a hat tip to Stan), but just today I received this email from the UK importer of Stone's beers:

"We also can confirm that Stone have agreed to extend their dates on their beer from their original 90 days to 270 days! They’re incredibly happy with how the beer is performing over time and with our refrigerated shipping, and now have the confidence to extend this into an export market that needs slightly more shelf-life."

Which is great news, as it means that we can now enjoy Stone's beers fresher for longer, right?

I mean, it's not like anyone took any notice of the dates, is it?

Or should this comment now haunt us forever?

FABPOW: Chicken, Chorizo and White Beans with Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale

FABPOW stands for 'Food and Beer Pairing of the Week", as coined by Mark at Pencil & Spoon. It's a nice format, and Mark has the courage to publish his misses as well as his hits, although I've yet to be convinced enough by Rochefort 8 and spaghetti bolognese to actually try it.

I've not written much about food and beer lately, but this was such a great match that I had to. As you can tell from the previous couple of posts, a shipment of beers from Stone Brewing has landed recently, so there's quite a bit of it about (if you look for it, that is). Arrogant Bastard Ale (7.2%abv) is one of those beers that really ticks all the boxes for me - strong, full malt profile, very well hopped, but still slightly sweeter than it is bitter. In fact, here's what I said about it in "500 Beers":

"The air is filled with the bristling aroma of a million zesty, peppery hops drowning in a sea of honeyed caramel, as a wave of Demerara sugar, tropical fruit and more bitter, resinous hops crash onto your palate. What did you expect from a beer with this sort of name? Magnificently uncompromising"

Great, eh?

If I'd stopped and thought about it, I'd have figured out that it would go well with a big, hearty tomato-based stew. As it turns out, this was a happy accident. If you can't get Arrogant Bastard, you could use, err, no, I can't think of a good substitute, sorry. But anyway, this is great one-pot comfort food for dark, wet evenings.

Chicken, Chorizo & White Bean Stew (Serves 2, with leftovers)

Finely chop a medium onion, fry in olive oil for 5 minutes
Smash and chop a clove of garlic, and add to the pan and fry for 2 minutes.
Slice about 10cm of thin chorizo into 20 slices (i.e. about 5mm each). Add to the pan and fry for 5 minutes.
Add chicken - either a couple of small diced breasts, or 4 whole or boned thighs.
Add a sprig of rosemary.
Add a tin of chopped tomatoes.
Simmer until the chicken is done.
Add a tin of drained butter beans, mix and warm through.

Serve with crusty bread and butter, and a large glass of Arrogant Bastard Ale per person.

The Rooster and The Gargoyle (or: Why Freshness Matters)

I had a night on the black IPA last night. Frankly, I should've stopped after drinking the 75cl bottle of Rooster's Oxymoronic Black IPA (6.5%abv), but for whatever reason, I threw caution to the wind and subsequently opened a bottle of Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale (8.7%abv). I felt every one of those 10 units the next day (today), which served to remind that (a) it's stupid drinking like that on a work night, and (b) I don't really get that drunk these days - it's been ages since I had a beer headache like the one I had today.

Rooster's Oxymoronic was a very limited run of Black IPA brewed by Sam Franklin as a farewell to the brewery - he's now emigrated to Canada, and is going to work for the Dead Frog Brewery. It was a delicious dark red ale, stuffed full of sweet dark malt character, mandarin hops and a hint of sarsparilla (or maybe dandelion and burdock). I couldn't believe what an easy drinking beer it was, and by virtue of its freshness, was absolutely bursting with vitality.

The bottle of Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous that followed was also a great beer, but much more full-bodied, and the hop character more muted. That's not to say it was a bad beer, but Stone, who are fanatical about the freshness of their beers, might have thought that this bottle was slightly suboptimal after its long trek to my glass.

Although these two beers sit broadly in the same style, they are formulated differently, and so comparisons are dodgy at best. But one thing that shone out was the freshness of the hop character of the beer that had been brewed recently, and had only travelled 30 miles to get to me. A similar thing was brought home to me when, last year in Rome, I tried side-by-side samples of Birra del Borgo - Dogfish Head My Antonia, one brewed in Milton, Delaware, the other in Borgorose, Italy. Needless to say, the local sample again won out that night.

There are a couple of other examples that spring to mind about how fresher beer has tasted better to me. Drinking bottles of Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen Weisse in the Uk was an oddly joyless experience after having tried the beer straight from the conditioning tank. And what ever happened to Red Brick Brewery Fresh?

Anyway, I'm aware that all of these things are a matter of taste. I've gone on record in plenty of places saying that I'm not crazy about ageing most beers, and that I enjoy most beer (and most wine, for that matter) with a little skip of youthful vigour left in it. In fact, while I mention wine, it's worth trotting out the wine world's maxim that there are no great wines, only great bottles of wine. Maybe there are also no great beers, only great glasses of beer.

Of course, all this went out of the window when I saw what the postman brought me this morning. But I'll save that for the next blog.

The Physical Impossibility of Drunkenness In The Mind of Someone at a Beer Festival*

The thing about beer festivals generally, and the GBBF by extrapolation, is that there is only so much beer that you can drink. I don't mean that there is a limit on the number of beers you can taste, but ultimately, there is a finite number of units of alcohol you can take on board before you think "I'm hot, tired, and want to go home". In short, before you get too drunk for it to be fun any more.

This was admirably demonstrated to me very early on - my first beer, in fact. Hopshackle Hop and Spicy (4.5%abv) was the only beer from them that was on cask. Fulsome praise from the Reluctant Scooper made me think that anything by them would be fun. Sadly, Hop and Spicy was a dark brown ginger beer - a bit thick, muddy, and definitely not what I wanted as my first GBBF beer. I had a sip, and realising that this was taking up valuable units that might otherwise be expended on things that were more in my target drinking zone, asked the doughty volunteer barstaff to dispose of it.

Fyne Jarl (4%abv) proved to be exactly what I was after. My notebook says "Brilliant gold, lively, with persistent lacing. Softly spicy Saaz-like lemony aroma, soft on palate, with persistent pithy bitterness in the finish. Great" Wonderful beer, in great condition. Inveralmond Ossian (4.1%abv) was of a similar style, but "caramel, honey and vanilla on the nose. More honey in the swallow. Finishes with snappy biscuity malt. Nice". At this point, I lost patience with the layout of the British bars - breweries are listed alphabetically according to county of location, with no map of the bars in the festival programme [edit - I'm totally wrong about this - see Ed's comment below] - and hit Bieres Sans Frontieres.

Toccalmatto Zona Cesarini IPA (6.6%abv) will get a blog post all of its own in the next few days. Mindful of a time-specific invite, I joined a happy few in front of the Fuller's bar, and was led away to a tasting of Fuller's Vintage and Brewer's Reserve beers. I've blogged about Fuller's before, but this tasting served to demonstrate what Fuller's do well (produce classic English ales that are suitable for ageing), and cemented John Keeling's place as the brewer that consistently delivers, both in terms of beer and of entertainment. The picture of him and Derek Prentice I've used here is intentionally misleading - they are great company, and don't hate each other as much as the photo implies. And the pretend leaking of their heritage porter project was a nice bit of theatre - to summarise, Fuller's will be releasing a traditional porter later this year, from an 1891 recipe, that's a blend of stock (aged) and running (fresh) ales. If my notes are to be believed, they will also be using porter that has been aged in casks that have previously held Brewer's Reserve.

But (perhaps sadly), one can't spend the whole day at GBBF in an anteroom being fed rare beers. Plunging back into the fray, my notes tell a tale of a man reaching the end of his capacity. Beck Brau Zoigl (5.8%abv) was possibly my beer of the festival. As I mentioned earlier, there are only so many units of alcohol that you can take on board, and I remember having three thirds of a pint of this. My notes say "yeasty, unfiltered liveliness, full of vanilla grain character, splendidly bitter finish".

Looking at my notes, and from memory, I also had a few American beers from cask, including Oskar Blues Pale Ale (6.5%abv) and Ballast Point Big Eye IPA (7%abv). Ballast Point was full of marmalade and tangerines, and in my opinion, needed to be chilled and force carbonated to show at its best. Oskar Blues was surprisingly good from cask, although from memory, it was better from can when I last tried it (in New York, 2007, with Cajun food).

Finally, a couple of beers that I only had sips of. American Flatbread Solstice Gruit (5.4%abv, beer of the festival for Impy Malting) was an interesting unhoppped curiosity - the way herbs had been deployed in place of hops reminded me of the Stone - Victory - Dogfish Head collaboration Saison du BUFF - eccentric and intriguing, but not necessarily something that I'd drink a lot of. The only other beer that was noteworthy (and not in a good way) was the dry-hopped Revelation Cat lambic, a beer that not only missed that mark in terms of flavour, but also had the texture of liquid that had been retrieved from a saloon bar spittoon.

*with apologies to Damien Hirst

Now Drinking: Stone Old Guardian Barleywine-Style Ale

In one of Douglas Adams' 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' books, he creates a scenario where a spaceship lands behind the sight screen at Lords cricket ground, but nobody notices it because the human brain has developed a technique of filtering out anything that it thinks is Somebody Else's Problem (SEP). This is essentially what I've been doing with this bottle of Stone Old Guardian Barleywine-Style Ale (11.3%abv) - not filtering it out as a problem, but just as a beer for another time.

But not today. Oh no, today, I've earned a beer through honest toil. I've got my jeans dirty, my hands covered in soil, and have planted a lot of herbaceous perennials in our narrow border. Feeling faintly emasculated by knowing what a herbaceous perennial is, but more to the point, hungry and tired after a bit of fork-wielding, I decided I needed nourishing, not only with food, but also strong ale.

There's something about strong beer that really hits the spot. I wrote about Schneider Aventinus Eisbock as being nourishment rather than refreshment, and so it is here. Maybe it's the unfermented sugars acting as a carbohydrate load - certainly, Old Guardian is sweet, but with enough hops to give it a (more or less) balanced drinkability. That said, this isn't a beer for the novice - you really need to know what you're letting yourself in for here. But it's a great barleywine, showing that classic interplay of malt sweetness and hop bitterness. World class, in fact.

And the food? Well, cheese on toast doesn't sound like anything special, and maybe that's the point. Some dried bread, a bit of melted cheese and some good beer - it sounds almost monastic in its simplicity. Maybe that's what's going on here - an honest recharging of the soul, lifting the spirit after a day's work. Once in a while, it's good to feel like you've earned a beer.

Sam Adams Imperial Stout with Baked Vanilla Cheesecake

This sort of joins up with the post from 10 days ago, in that it's another imperial stout, and I'm having to plough through the cellar at the moment and try to finish up some of the beers that I want to drink while there is still snow on the ground (and in Leeds today, we have about 3 inches on the ground).

I could have paired this with any of 4 or 5 imperial stouts, but the Sam Adams one leapt out at me, mainly by being at the front of the shelf. Sam Adams produce a huge range of beers, but the only one we see regularly here is their Boston Lager, imported by Shepherd Neame. Despite a few phone calls and a bit of gentle cajoling, it seems as though Sheps aren't going to import anything but Boston Lager in the near future. A shame, but there we go.

The imperial stout is part of Sam Adams' Imperial series - basically, smaller runs of bigger beers for the more niche end of the market. It's a great departure for a big and successful brewer, and makes you wonder why more people don't do something similar. It puts me in mind of Carlsberg's response to the burgeoning microbrewing scene in Denmark - they just started brewing characterful small batch beers, which were embraced by the Danish beer geeks.

The match of imperial stout and vanilla cheesecake isn't rocket science. Both the beer and the dessert are fairly big and chewy, with similar textures, but contrast hugely on the flavour front. But although they contrast, they also highlight the commonalities - the lovely rich creamy vanilla quality in both of them. As you'd expect, the imperial stout is stuffed full of chocolate and espresso character, very clean and slickly executed, as all Sam Adams' beers tend to be.

It's a big gutsy pairing, not something to eat at the end of a large meal. We had this after a fairly light supper, and in calorific terms, it was the bigger half of the meal. It makes perfect sense to me - go easy on the salad to leave plenty of room for dessert and an impy.



POSTSCRIPT: I had another chunk of cheesecake a few nights later with a Stone Russian Imperial Stout, which is a much bigger, wilder beast altogether - lots more burnt and smoky notes going on than in the Sam Adams. If anything, this wildness made it an even better match.

Right Here, Right Now

Beer geeks (and I include myself in that non-derogatory term) will be delighted by the news that Vertical Drinks (their Facebook group is here) have just become UK importers for Delaware-based Dogfish Head, producers of many celebrated beers including their 90 Minute IPA, one of the classics of the Double IPA style.

Flying Dog also seem to be on a roll at the moment, with some of their more unusual offerings landing in Europe yesterday, including Raging Bitch (terrible name, great beer). Stone are musing about opening a brewery in Europe. BrewDog are building a reputation (and a deservedly successful business) on unashamedly bold, American-inspired ales.

This is great, but I wonder, does it take some of the magic out of beer geekery? Mark Dredge is talking about his forthcoming beer trip, and in fact it's something that I am (or rather, was) hoping to do next summer. To me, it makes sense going to the source and drinking these beers in their natural habitat. But having them easily available in the UK? Doesn't having these beers dropped in your lap take some of the shine out of it? Do these beers speak of a place and an ethos if you can mail-order them to your door, or go and buy them in Tescos?