Mitch Steele, head brewer at Stone Brewing Co., needs a band, because he has the most metal name in brewing. He’s also a pretty smart guy with tons of experience in both macro- and microbrewing, having previously served as a managing brewer at Anheuser-Busch before beginning his now 2.5-year (and growing) tenure at Stone.

On November 4th, Mitch braved the airlines to trek all the way out from San Diego to Philadelphia, where he headed up Tria’s Election Night edition of Fermentation School in a lecture entitled “Get Stoned on Election Day”.

To accompany the lecture, Mitch brought seven of Stone’s best beers: Pale Ale, IPA, Arrogant Bastard, Ruination IPA, 11th Anniversary Ale, 07.07.07 Vertical Epic aged in red wine barrels, and a 2006 vintage of Double Bastard aged in brandy barrels. Tria, for its part, paired all of this with two cheeses (creamy Cherry Grove Toma from Lawrenceville, NJ, and smoky smooth Vella Dry Monterey Jack from Sonoma, CA) along with spiced, toasted almonds, a few slices of prosciutto, and soft Philly pretzels.

While guiding us through the beer list, Mitch fed us piles upon piles of rich, chewy insight into American brewing. Did you know that 19th century brewers actually prided themselves on their use of rice and corn in their beers, even going so far as to make it a selling point? Did you know that today, it’s actually more expensive to cut beer with those grains instead of simply using nothing but malted barley? Or that a lot of double IPAs are fermented with additional sugar in order to get the ABV nice and high without having to use a lot of malt?

My favorite fact was how Stone stumbles upon some of their recipes. The brewery maintains a 20-gallon pilot brewing system that employees are free to putz around with, creating a democratic process that leads Mitch and his brewers to beers that they wouldn’t have otherwise invented. National phenomenon Arrogant Bastard is one direct result of this system (turns out it was all just a big mistake that happened to taste really good), as is Stone’s impossibly delicious 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout.

Which brings us to the beers themselves. You’re probably already familiar with the first three beers on the list. Stone’s Pale Ale smells sweet and floral and fills your mouth with just enough hoppy bitterness to make you want to drink way too much of it; the Centennial dry-hopped IPA fills your nose and mouth with earthy, citrusy hop flavors; and legendary Arrogant Bastard was its usual mysterious self, assaulting you with a barrage of malts and hops. Stone is very protective of the recipe for Arrogant Bastard, even going to far as to deny it a classification, and Mitch refused to say a single word about how it is made.

Ruination IPA is Stone’s Double IPA, though double may be the wrong word. A typical American Double IPA is essentially a regular IPA with twice the malt and twice the hops, but Stone is Stone — double won’t cut it. And so, Ruination IPA uses quadruple the hops of Stone’s standard IPA recipe, and it shows. The beer is crisp and refreshing, yet somehow massive, probably owing to the sheer weight of hop oils swirling through the glass. The nose is so hugely sweet and hoppy that I wouldn’t judge anyone for using this beer as an air freshener.

Needless to say, Stone is famous for their liberal use of hops, but the last three beers show that they have more than a few other tricks up their sleeves.

The 11th Anniversary Ale is an innovative Black IPA, which combines a big IPA — bittered with Chinook and dry-hopped with Simcoe and Amarillo — with a German dark lager. Thanks to a generous helping of German Carafa malts (dark, dehusked malts that provide all of the flavors of roasted malt without the gritty bitterness), the beer boasts a complex balance, beginning with huge hop flavors and aromas and leaving in its wake lots of roasty malt. Everyone in the room agreed that this was a spectacular beer, so we were all pleased to hear that Stone is currently working on making this a year-round offering. All they need, Mitch told us, is a name.

The 07.07.07 Vertical Epic is a 10% ABV Belgian-style strong ale, spiced with grapefruit peel, lemon peel, cardamom, and ginger, and aged in red wine barrels. The nose pops with lots of spice, oak, and dry red wine aromas, making your tongue tingle in anticipation… That might have been a little too colorful. Ah well, it stays. It was delicious, okay?

The brandy-aged Double Bastard is a work of unrelenting madness. I theorize that Mitch peeled back the veils of perception and gazed into the maw of blistered, horrifying reality to bind himself to this mania. Already sinister by way of a doubled Arrogant Bastard recipe, this particular vintage of Double Bastard did hard time in a disused brandy barrel, emerging changed, mutated into a display of smooth oak, spicy brandy, and, you know, a shit ton of malts and hops. Stone claims that this beer is only 10% ABV — I think they lie. I can still feel it more than a week later.

After the lecture, I managed to grab Mitch’s attention for a few minutes to talk about his time with Anheuser-Busch. He explained that, as a managing brewer, he had quite a bit more freedom of creativity than the other brewers in the company had. He even listed several recent Michelob brews that can be credited to him. That said, he was emphatic to point out that he was a big exception: Most macrobrewers are trapped by their company’s recipes, and even Mitch didn’t have carte blanche in his work. It was easy to see that he was leagues happier working for Stone.

We extended a verbal wedding invitation to Mitch before making our way back down to street level, buzzy and full, but satisfied by our generous look into the commercial craft beer world.

Breweries, Craft Beer, Restaurants, Tasting 1 Comment »