The Stone Blog

If you’ve ever visited the Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens, you know that we’re pretty obsessed with where our food comes from. We only use in-season, locally, regionally, and organically grown produce. We serve grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, and we’re certified by the World Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals as a restaurant that serves humanely-raised meat and dairy products.

So we’re pretty satisfied with the degree to which the Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens lives up to our ideals. However, there’s always room for improvement, especially when it comes to health and environmental sustainability, so we’ve decided to take things up a notch by participating in the international movement called Meatless Mondays.

Don’t panic. It’s voluntary. Think of us as enablers.

As in, we’re going to enable you to live a little longer. A little healthier. And benefit our planet in the process.

You see, our society has a great challenge upon us. Over the last few generations, America has modified its eating habits at the hands of the mass marketers (we’ve collectively doubled per capita meat consumption has increased by 65% since 1950 in the U.S.) If you thought YOU were in control, looking at the big picture we can see that has not been the case at all. Instead, we have been doing what we’ve been told, and we’ve been fooled into thinking it was our own choice. We have been told to bite down, and Americans have said “How big a bite?”

We’ve been programmed. The very fact that you may be feeling that the above does NOT apply to you—“I exhibit free will. No one tells me what to eat!”—is the first sign that they have you. They don’t want you to know about, or to personally admit to, the manipulation. Face it, we’ve been owned. They told us to eat meat and processed foods. More meat. More processed foods. And we listened. We now eat more meat than nearly every other society on the planet. And our health problems have skyrocketed right along with it.

However, we know you are not a mindless automaton, and we refuse to treat you like one.

“But I eat only eat locally raised meat,” you say. Well that’s great, certainly a step in the right direction (a step we ourselves have taken.) But the distance food travels only accounts for 11% of its carbon footprint.

The fact is, meat is far more energy, water, and land intensive than vegetables.  Conveniently, this means that reducing your meat intake is the easiest, healthiest, and cheapest way to minimize your personal impact on the environment.

It’s time that we throw off these chains of oppression.  It’s time that we say “No more…you can no longer treat me like a gullible, uninformed serf of the marketers.” It’s time we say, “I take my health, my happiness, my responsibility to society, my life into my own hands.”  It’s time we celebrate the vegetable!  And to that, we offer you the opportunity to celebrate Meatless Mondays with us as a step towards a brighter future!

Caution: if you howl in protest as a devout meat-eater over the lack of choice, you’re marking yourself as someone who’s not paying attention. You see, you are not being forced to eat meatless on Mondays. You still have the choice to request meat dishes if you so desire.

However, if you’d like to be true to our mutual heritage and eat like a caveman, then you’ll embrace a day without meat, as cavemen ate far less meat then we do!

Lastly, in the unlikely event anyone has the idea that this is a ploy by us to make more money, please note that our vegetarian items are generally less profitable. That’s OK, we’ll survive…and likely so will you!

EDIT: Here’s a link to the Meatless Mondays menu at the Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens. Or, download a PDF of the menu.

As loyal readers of this blog may remember, Kelsey McNair brewed the champion beer at our hotly contested 2010 March Madness Homebrew Competition & AHA Rally, an intensely hoppy session brew dubbed “West Coast Bitter.” Impressed with his creativity, craftsmanship, and distinctly Southern California flair, the esteemed panel of judges chose West Coast Bitter to be brewed here at Stone as one of our collaboration beers.

Like celebrity deaths, Stone collaborators always come in threes, so there was the small matter of picking a third collaborator. Kelsey picked Colby Chandler of Ballast Point, a San Diego brewer of great skill and acclaim, for his expertise in crafting exceptionally hoppy session brews, a choice heartily endorsed by Stone Head Brewer Mitch Steele.

Kelsey and Mitch made the trip over to Ballast Point’s Linda Vista brewery  and homebrew shop to meet up with Colby and finalize the recipe for West Coast Bitter’s large-scale incarnation. Kelsey brought in a growler of his latest batch of the award-winning brew, which the three brewers sampled alongside Stone’s previous collaboration beers and a generous slew of rare offerings from Ballast Point.

Such exceptional beers proved to be the perfect fuel for figuring out the nitty gritty of brewing a full size batch of West Coast Bitter. Kelsey is nothing if not hardcore about his brewing, and the process of scaling up his recipe to the 120-barrel batches brewed on our somewhat-more-elaborate-than-a-homebrew-setup brewing system tickled his beer geek fancy in a big way.

Adding to the excitement, we’re also pleased to announce that West Coast Bitter will be Stone’s official entry at the Great American Beer Fest’s Pro-Am Competition! The Pro-Am Competition allows breweries and homebrewers from all over the country to collaborate on recipes and see how they stack up on craft beer’s biggest stage.

Indeed, all were stoked about the upcoming brew day on July 12th, sure to be the hoppiest in Stone collaboration history. If all goes according to plan, the beer itself should be available in the late summer/early fall, leaving plenty of time for warm weather quaffing.

Our President & Brewmaster Steve Wagner and Head Brewer Mitch Steele took a minute out of their cluttered schedules to sample their British-inspired hop monster: Stone 14th Anniversary Emperial IPA, set for release on June 21st (for those who missed it, Mitch and Steve explained the concept behind this most unusual beer a few weeks back.) So here’s Mitch and Steve doing the difficult work of sampling beer in our gardens:

For those who prefer the analog version, here are Mitch’s tasting notes:

Appearance: This beer pours golden with a creamy head of foam. It is very pale in color, with a slight haze. Aroma: The aroma is strongly hoppy, a blend of peaches, light citrus and earthy/herbal flavors. It’s a bit of a departure from the classic American citrusy and piney IPA hop profile, but it is unmistakably hoppy. Taste: Upon tasting, the classic pale malt character becomes apparent with a touch of sweetness and a light biscuity flavor, yet this beer remains incredibly hop focused. Resiny, fruit flavored hops dominate the palate upfront and through the middle. Yeast esters are blended into the flavor mix in the middle palate, and the beer finishes very bitter and dry, with just a tiny hint of sulfur. Overall: Our Stone 14th Anniversary Emperial IPA may defy today’s expectations of a British inspired IPA. It’s not a ‘maltier’ IPA, and no crystal malts were used in the brewing of this beer. British brewers in the 1800’s made their IPA’s as light in color and as dry as possible, and that was our inspiration. And though we still like to encourage everyone to drink our IPA’s fresh, this one may be interesting to age. Especially on a 6 month long ocean voyage…” ABV: 8.9% IBUs: 100

Summer is almost officially upon us, which means it’s time to prep your palates for our biggest, boldest charity fundraiser: the Stone 14^th Anniversary Celebration & Invitational Beer Festival. Our annual tribute to another marvelous year of brewing is our grandest event, a veritable avalanche of awesomeness compressed into one short weekend—with all the proceeds going to charity.

You may have noticed that I wrote, “weekend,” not, “day.” Let me explain.

In the past, the Stone Anniversary Celebration & Invitational Beer Festival has been a one-day, two-session event, with upwards of 40 breweries pouring well over 100 of their finest nectars for throngs of enthused fans. The event has been so stupendously successful, both as a bringer of good cheer and as a charity fundraiser (last year we raised over $150,000), that we’ve decided to double down on the radness and add a couple of new events, all still taking place at the eminently hospitable CSU San Marcos.

On Friday, August 20^th, we’ll be holding a VIP/Brewers Reception, which will be open to the ticket-buying public for the very first time. Brewers and fans will mingle over a special selection of beers and food (including the famous Mike’s Beer Cheese made with Winchester Gouda and Stone 09.09.09 Vertical Epic Ale) not available during the regular sessions. A commemorative tasting glass has been made for the event, which will look fabulous next to your Princess Diana memorial dinner plate (too soon?)

Saturday, August 21^st also features a brand spankin’ new event, albeit one that runs concurrent with the Festival. A special, new, and all together different wristband will get you into the newly christened Rare Beer Section, a cordoned off arena in which rare beers go head-to-head for the hearts (and palates) of fans. The Rare Beer Section will be hosted by Stone’s inimitable Beverage Supervisor “Dr.” Bill Sysak, infamous bringer of insanely rare and delectable beers.

Admission to the Rare Beer Section also grants you the luxury of attending both Saturday sessions, a heretofore unavailable indulgence allowing you to take in the day’s decadence at a leisurely, civilized pace. Alas, Rare Beer Section ticket holders will still receive the standard 10 tasting tickets for the entire day.

This is all, of course, in addition to the Main Event on Saturday: two sessions of outstanding breweries from near and far pouring luscious samples, plates of the legendary Arrogant Bastard Ale Onion Rings (an annual release at least as desirable as a certain Midwestern Russian Imperial Stout, in our humble estimation), and more excellent food than you can shake a stick at.

All-inclusive ticket packages go on-sale Friday, May 28th at 5AM PST, and Main Event tickets go on-sale Friday, June 4th at 5AM PST.

You may remember a little idea bomb we dropped a few days before Christmas about potentially opening a brewery in Europe. Today we are taking a big step forward on that project with the release of our Request For Proposal.

Just what in the hell is a Request For Proposal, you ask? Truthfully, we weren’t really sure ourselves, so we decided to check some out. We learned, more or less, that they tell the world about your project, with the goal of finding people who can help make it happen. The problem: the ones we found bored us to tears…when we were able to stay awake long enough to conjure up those tears.

So we took the standard RFP and poured sauce all over it. Yummy, interesting, Stone sauce. Or, to put it literally, we designed and wrote our little hearts out in order to tell Stone’s story as powerfully as possible. What we ended up with is an über-shiny overview of the brewery and what we’re all about, along with some details about what we’re looking for in a potential European location.

The results were a little jarring even to us. It’s glossy, polished, and maybe even a little businesslike, which is not how we usually think of ourselves. But we quickly realized that the RFP reflects the tremendous skills of all the Team Stone folks who created it. Turns out we’ve got some serious badasses working here. Collectively, we’ve got smarts, looks, and talent. We even want to ask ourselves out. Did I just say that out loud?

Anyway, check it out for yourself, but keep in mind that at the end of the day, it’s a business document. We’re sharing it with all of you so that you can follow us on this crazy project from beginning to end.

Without further ado, behold the most Arrogant RFP ever.

Today we unleash upon an unsuspecting world the latest installment in our collaboration series: Dogfish Head / Victory / Stone Saison du BUFF. Three great breweries, three old friends, one hellaciously herbaceous beer.

Before divulging any more details, let’s fire up the flux capacitor and set the Delorean to 2003. That’s the year Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, Bill Covaleski of Victory, and our own Greg Koch formed the ill-fated Brewers United for Freedom of Flavor (BUFF), a three person organization with the mission of “flex[ing] their verbal muscles in a no-holds barred attack on mindless video-drone beer attitudes,” in the words of the original press release.

BUFF held a single press conference in an aisle of a Boston liquor store. Despite sending invitations to a slew of mainstream media contacts, a single member of the beer press deemed the event worthy of attendance.

Seven years later, Greg, Sam, and Bill felt that the time was right to commemorate that abortive shot across the bow of brewing mediocrity, and a collaboration beer seemed the perfect forum for their unique brand of sudsy activism.

Amazingly, despite having brewed well over a hundred different beers between the three of them, none had made a beer like Saison du BUFF, which takes the earthy quaffability of a Belgian farmhouse ale and adds the kind of twist you’d expect from these three brewing miscreants: sage, thyme, parsley, and Stone Estate (i.e. our parking lot) grown rosemary.

As you can imagine given the personalities involved, the Saison du BUFF brew day was like watching a gaggle of crazed lemurs operate heavy machinery. Fortunately, someone was there to film it:

So what does Saison du BUFF taste like, you ask? How about we have Sam explain:

“Minty, piney, estery nose to it…Ohhh, that’s a good beer, starts out kind of marmaladey and sweet, and then it gets kind of clovey and dry…rustic, earthy, and hay[-like], wheaty. Beautiful, complex, very drinkable saison. First one came out awesome!”

Not to be left out, Bill sent us these tasting notes: “Fluffy white head is taut over golden incense burner of inviting aromas. Bright hops evident on the nose but deeper notes of oily sage also very apparent. Or was that the rosemary…? A sip and I am no closer to the truth but totally enthralled with this brew. It makes me hungry as the herbal flavors are both bright and savory with the lemony hops lifting all impressions. Body is firm and food friendly. Bon appétit!”

If that sounds up your alley, you should be able to find Saison du BUFF wherever you can find Stone. If you don’t get Stone, but you do get Dogfish Head or Victory, you’re in luck because Greg, Sam, and Bill will be brewing two more batches of Saison du BUFF, once at Dogfish Head on June 6th and again at Victory on June 10th. So keep your eyes peeled and your noses primed for this pungent, uniformity-smashing collaboration beer.

As loyal readers of this blog, you undoubtedly remember that our Head Brewer Mitch Steele and Brewmaster Steve Wagner took a cushy paid vacation to Britain back in February, allegedly to research a book they’re writing on IPAs.

Well now they’ve gotten down to business; specifically, the business of brewing this summer’s Stone 14th Anniversary Emperial IPA. Unsurprisingly, the trip provided some liquid inspiration for the Anniversary brew. Here’s Mitch and Steve explaining their vision for this most unusual beer:

When Dr. Bill tells you he’s assembling a legendary collection of wood-aged beers for a festival in our gardens, it’s best to take him seriously. After the veritable tsunami of awesomeness that was Stone Oakquinox, it’s hard to imagine why anyone wouldn’t.

The 112 beers on-tap and in bottles represented a mighty collection of wood-aged deliciousness. With so many highlights on the beer list, some Oakquinoxers ended up sporting a deer-in-headlights look, their faces frozen in a rictus of pleasure at the site of so many rare and sought-after beers.

Fortunately, the shock wore off quickly, and all in attendance began the serious business of sampling these oaky beasts. Based on the exuberant pictures, thunderous toasts, and vocal praise, we feel confident concluding that Oakquinox was a tremendous success, one that will most certainly be repeated next year.

Your hankering for beer festivals needn’t go unfulfilled for an entire year, however. On July 18^th, Stone Sour Fest will be taking over the gardens in similar fashion, featuring mouth-puckering, horizon-expanding brews made with wild yeasts and bacteria (if you’ve never tried sour beers, they’re far more appetizing than that description may sound.)

In addition to Stone Winter Storm, Oakquinox, and Sour Fest, next year Dr. Bill will  introduce a 4^th festival, the theme of which is top secret. That’s right folks, quarterly beer festivals at Stone. Set your tasters to “Yum!”

2010 marks the 10^th year we’ve brewed our darkest, most foreboding beer: Stone Imperial Russian Stout, the most recent incarnation of which will be released on April 19th. We take great pleasure in knowing that Imperial Russian Stout has brought its inky, formidable joy to the mouths of Stone fans for a full decade now, all the while accumulating a flattering collection of awards and praise.

In honor of this palate-pounding milestone, we decided to make something special in tribute to our beastly, luscious imperial stout.

A shadowy meeting was held to determine an appropriate honor for Imperial Russian Stout on its big anniversary. Since inspiration doesn’t come out of thin air, kegs of Imperial Russian Stout from 2003-2010 were hauled up from the depths of our archives, including a special bourbon barrel-aged version from 2008.

With such mighty vintages in attendance, it is little wonder that the idea of a blend—a cuvee de Escondido & San Marcos, if you will—was quickly decided upon. Beakers, pipettes, palette-cleansing fluids, and other blending implements were hustled into the room, and the alchemical process commenced.

After hours of rigorous tasting and fervent debating (and yet more tasting,) a final blend was decided upon.

Following the momentous assembly, a limited number of kegs of the new Stone Imperial Russian Stout 10^th Anniversary Special Blend were mixed, with some set aside for archiving and a small amount placed in red wine barrels for aging. An even smaller quantity was diverted for yet another blend, dubbed “Stone Imperial Russian Stout—GK Madman Mix”, created by our own CEO Greg Koch.

For those eager to grace their palates with this historic fluid, the Blend goes on tap today at the Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens.

The marketing manual for sheeple herding says that we’re supposed to engage you by soliciting user-generated content with catchy challenges like this: “Hey die-hard Stone fans! Show you’re the Ultimate Stone Head by posting sweet pics of you and your BFFs at Stone Beer Week-Chicago events on our Facebook fan page! And don’t forget to Twitterize us with #StoneWeek hash-tags! Win a Frisbee!”

But we know you’re a whole lot smarter than that.

In all seriousness, since we won’t be sending everyone from the brewery to Chicago this week, we’d like to get some vicarious pleasure from the absurdly decadent events we’ve been working so hard to plan, which is why we’re asking you, for real, to post those Facebook pics and Tweets about Stone Beer Week-Chicago.

So do us that favor, will ya?

Now let’s back up a bit. As a supremely plugged-in Stone fanatic, you are undoubtedly aware that our exceptionally beautiful beers will finally be available in Chicago starting April 1st. Yes, the wait has been long and arduous for the legions of bastardly disciples in the Second City, but we aim to make up for lost time—in a hurry.

To that end, we have planned an epic week-long celebration of all things Stone, entitled Stone Beer Week-Chicago*. A veritable carnival of Arrogance will introduce us to Chicago with proper gusto from April 1^st-9^th.

This extravagant series of soirees will see us taking over an entire grocery store, hosting 30 taps at a single bar, offering an ultra-rare tasting of Stone Vertical Epic Ales with Greg Koch himself, grilling up Stone Smoked Porter sausages, presenting incredibly tasty barrel-aged versions of our most ambitious beers, pairing exceptional food with fine vintages from our past, and the list goes on and on…

Do those kinds of events sound enticing to you? What if I told you that the events mentioned above represent a mere fraction of the 34, yes thirty-four, events planned for Stone Beer Week-Chicago? And what if I added that the remaining Stone events will be every bit as awesome, such that Stone Beer Week-Chicago will feature a concentration of Stone awesomeness that the world has never seen before?

That would be exciting for you, wouldn’t it? Well that’s great, because while I’m stuck here in sunny San Diego, you’ll be cabbing/bussing/train-ing/shuttling/walking from one jaw-dropping Stone event to another, having the time of your life sipping some of the sweetest nectars this brewery has ever made.

So enjoy yourselves Chicagoans. You’ve earned it. Just don’t forget to send us a postcard, mmmmmk?

*Best said in a Big Announcer Voice with lots of reverb.