Stone Vertical Epic 090909

My wife travels for work and I am a pretty lucky husband.  She likes beer but not as much as I do.  Despite that, she fully supports my Year of Beer and loves to help me in my quest.  Whenever she travels she looks for places she can stop and buy beer for me and she usually scores.  Last week she was out in Pittsburgh PA and on her way home she stopped at Brews Brothers.  One of the beers she picked up for me was this Stone Vertical Epic 090909.   She knew I wanted to try it and the only place I could find it was selling it by the case only and I didn’t want to drop $100+ on a beer I never tried.

Stone Brewing Company’s epic series is pretty interesting.  Before I started this year of beer and really dove into craft beer I had never heard of Stone Brewing Company.  For those that don’t know, they are one of the largest craft breweries in the country and produce some really fantastic beer.   In February of 2002, they brewed and sold their first beer in their Vertical Epic series.  It was released on 02/02/02.  The next year, they released the second beer in the series on 03/03/03 and so on.  It’s a really neat way to release an annual limited edition beer.

The beer pours a very dark brown with a light brown head.  It had a pretty nice head that stuck around for awhile.   The aroma is pleasant, it’s not super strong like you would expect with a beer like this but it’s not weak either.  I am getting hints of chocolate, citrus, and raisin when I smell this beer.

The taste of the beer is very complex, I am getting all kinds of flavors and I can’t identify all of them. I can taste chocolate, spices, some citrus and even some banana.  I can’t pick up what spices I am tasting but they are certainly there.  The after taste is bitter but nice and sticks around for quite awhile.

The beer has a great mouthfeel, it’s a little thick but for the complexity of this beer it’s perfect.

Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale

This is a really complex beer, I think it’s going to be a tough one for me to describe.  I hate for a bottle to be correct but I think I may indeed be unworthy of reviewing this beer but I am going to give it a try.

Arrogant Bastard pours a very dark reddish mahogany color.  It had a nice and creamy head that was about two fingers high that stuck around for an impressive length of time.

For a beer that has a pretty strong taste, I didn’t think it had an overly strong aroma.   The beer has a slightly citrus and hop aroma but it’s nice and not overpowering.

There are a lot of flavors coming through in this beer and I can’t identify all of them.  There is a strong hop taste and bitterness that dominate the flavor but there is more behind it.  I am picking up caramel and some citrus flavors behind the hop.  I am tasting something else but I really don’t know what it is.   I guess I will just have to drink a few more and figure it out.

It has a nice mouthfeel, not overly thick but not watery either.  It’s the perfect mouthfeel for this type of beer.

I am not really sure what category this beer would fall under if it would fall under any at all.   Arrogant Bastard Ale may just be in a category by itself.

I really enjoyed this beer but I don’t think it has great drinkability.  I couldn’t sit here and drink a lot of these in one sitting.  But then again, there is no reason why every beer has to be a session beer.