A fermenting beer never slumbers. Consequently, there is always scattered activity tending our precious beers throughout the dark hours. In these late nights and wee hours that hallowed responsibility falls to the shoulders of the overnight Brew Crew. These brewing soloists brave the long nights, often alone, to do what needs to be done. Most areas of the brewery are dark or in shadows.…
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. was the very first craft brewery I ever visited. This was waaaay back in 1984, when they were in their original location. Brewmaster Steve Dressler was there brewing (if my memory serves) on a 10-barrel system, and all the beer was fermenting in open fermenters that were repurposed dairy tanks. This…
Our all-important, hop-driven quest to deliver the most devastatingly fresh IPA on the planet facilitated a paradigm shift in 2012 with the launch of Stone Enjoy By IPA. Not only did we brew this beer with more than 10 different hops, we brewed it specifically NOT to last. Acclaimed for its groundbreakingly short shelf life, this intense double IPA brought forth a whole new conceptof what…
Imagine an entire month devoted to hoppy beer. Hop cones, humulus lupulus, acids both alpha and beta celebrated with great fervor and the hoisting of many pints of double and triple India pale ales. It’s a most glorious scene for the mind’s eye to survey. Now open your eyes and ready your palate, because things are about to get really real courtesy of…
Recognizing the marketing power of slapping a celebrity’s name on a bottle, many are the adult beverage producers who seek out popular, public-facing people to help sell their liquid wares. All too often, it consists of little more than some TV time, and payment of royalties for the rental of a moniker and its associated persona via some “signature blend,” “private label” or similarly shallow…
What do craft beer and the nostalgic confection, Pop Rocks, have in common? Not a damn thing! Seriously. One is pure and all-natural, and the other is mass-produced using who knows what chemicals, stabilizers, dyes, etc. But given the latter’s (admittedly cool) effects on the human palate, …
This one-time-only release, part of our “Odd Beers for Odd Years” series, takes a downright excessive brew into uncharted, extra-hoppy territory. We did this by dry-hopping it with Azacca hops, essentially turning an American barley wine into a triple IPA. Azacca adds big candied-fruit character plus…
Since Day One, we've been abundantly forthright and fully transparent about our lust for hops. It's led us to craft many an IPA, most of them imperial—some intense for their time and all timeless in their intensity. For Stone Go To IPA, we embrace our hop obsession in a new way, funneling an abundance of lupulin-borne bitterness into a session IPA that delivers all the fruity, piney…
A beer that pays homage to a centuries-old tradition of combining new beer with aged “stock ales.” Freshly brewed beers of the day often were very smoky and bitter tasting, and were blended with older beer that had mellowed with age to produce more drinkable libations. This modern brew showcases our brewers’ talents in blending a stock ale aged more than three months in oak foudres (large wooden…
Some illusions and misnomers lead to life’s most delightful surprises. Case in point—this beer, the yang to the yin that is the black India pale ale. Once revolutionary for its onyx appearance, it is now an accepted and beloved member of the India pale ale family. Thus we took the spirit of a dark beer—the time-honored stout—and applied a similar science of thought, brewing it to be golden-hued.…
