Stone Brewing Company - Stone 15th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA

I'll admit it, it's been a while since I had a beer from Stone that really impressed me. Stone has lost my favor for a few reasons.

1: Their year round line up isn't anything I would order on tap unless the other choices consisted of Coors Light and Bud 55.

2: Their recent collaborations had intriguing ideas, but didn't really come through for me. And finally...

3. Their whole "You're a sissy if you can't handle our beer and we didn't want your business anyways" approach feels like it's been going on for a few years too long.

That said, Stone's 15th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA is one of the best beers I've had all year. I didn't expect this beer to suck (it's rare that a beer from Stone is truly terrible, with the exception of their Belgo Anise Russian Imperial Stout), but I didn't see a beer from Stone ever blowing my mind like this one did.

Stone's 15th Anniversary Escondidian Imperial Black IPA pours a jet black color with the consistency of motor oil. I've had a few black IPAs in the past and almost all of them were way too thin. I could tell this one wouldn't have that problem the second the beer left the bottle.

At first, this beer smells like an IPA, with some lush aromas of citrus hops and some pine in the background. But as you spend a little more time with the beer, hints of earth, roasted malt and leather creep in. I'm not ashamed to admit that I probably spent more time smelling this beer than I did drinking it (and I didn't drink it quickly).

The taste starts with some dark roasted malt flavors, then moves into more familiar IPA territory with some fresh pine hops. The finish brings in some dark roasted coffee and a bit of tobacco. To me, this may have been a bit more like a very hoppy stout than a black IPA, but that worked for me because I love stouts. The mouthfeel was rich and velvety with just the right amount of carbonation to keep the beer from being too syrupy. At nearly 11% ABV, this beer is one you should spend a little time finishing. So sip it, enjoy the intricate blend of styles, and get some more before it's gone.

Final Grade: A+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 26

Midnight Sun Brewing Company - TREAT (Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter)

About a year ago, I heard about Midnight Sun's TREAT. All I needed to hear were the words "chocolate" and "pumpkin" together and I knew I had to try this beer. After trying to obtain it for a while down in San Diego, I learned that Midnight Sun doesn't really distribute to California. Disappointed, I started looking into other ways to get the beer and finally found it online. It had been sitting in the house for almost a year until this past weekend.

TREAT pours a midnight black color with a half-finger tan head. The smell was incredible. I've had my fair share of pumpkin beers, but I've never come across one with a smell this intense. It smelled like someone baked a pumpkin pie inside the bottle. Huge aromas of canned pumpkin, nutmeg and chocolate rose from the glass. This beer was definitely a keeper.

Sometimes a beer will come along and really intrigue me with the smell, but when I take a sip, I'm totally let down. Luckily, this was not one of those beers. I picked up rich flavors of pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove along with a big chocolate flavor. I definitely wish I had picked up more than one bottle of this one.

Final Grade: A+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 26

Brasserie Fantôme - Fantôme Saison

My sister was in town this weekend, so I thought it would be fun for her to take part in a little beer tasting. What started as a few bottles turned into, well, a lot. Here's a picture of the lineup for the night.



The lineup was (in order shown): The Bruery's Orchard White, Magic Hat's #9, Alesmith's Yulesmith Summer, Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada's Life and Limb, Drei Fonteinen's Oude Geuze, Great Divide's Rumble (which is the only beer we didn't get to), Pretty Things' Jack D'Or, Hair of the Dog's Blue Dot, Midnight Sun's T.R.E.A.T., Dogfish Head's Theobroma, Fantôme's Fantôme Saison, and Sierra Nevada's Torpedo (not shown). Needless to say, it was a very fun night. Over the next few days, I'll be reviewing some of the beers we tasted, starting with today's review of #80 on the Top 100 - Fantôme Saison.

I first heard about Fantôme Saison while reading through beeradvocate's Top 100 list about a year ago. It definitely caught me eye if for no other reason than it has an awesome label. I made it a point to look through every beer on the list and try to remember the names in case I ever stumbled upon them in a bottle shop. Many times, I found beers by Brasserie Fantôme, but never the saison. When asked about the saison, a lot of shop owners told me that they were trying to get it, but it was kind of a rare find. Finally, a year later, I found it at the Pizza Port bottle shop (on the day of the tasting, no less). Figuring it was fate, I picked up the bottle and opened it that night.

Fantôme Saison pours a hazy golden color with a one finger eggshell-colored head. I got some aromas of apple cider, vanilla, lemon and a touch of barnyard funk. The "funk factor" wasn't as high in this as a saison like Dupont's, but this had just enough to let you know it was a proper saison.

The taste definitely didn't disappoint, but it also didn't impress me as much as I was hoping it might. I picked up some lemon, pear, fermented apple, champagne yeast and a nice dose of funk. The champagne yeast flavor dried out the beer a lot and left nothing but a bit of funk on the finish. The mouthfeel was way light for a beer packing 8% ABV, so it's definitely one that has the potential to sneak up on you. Overall, it was a great saison, but the Saison Dupont may still be the king of saisons for me.

Final Grade: A

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 26

Deschutes Brewery - The Abyss

I'll admit it, I was a little apprehensive going into this tasting. I had been craving for more of The Abyss ever since I tried it for the first time over a year ago. But something in me was worried that it wouldn't be as good the second time around. And I didn't know if I wanted to mess with the greatest memory I have of drinking a beer. Absolutely everything about the Abyss the first time around blew me away. Was it really possible for a beer to do that twice? Unfortunately not.

I opened a bottle of 2010 Abyss last week with Beau and another coworker who had never tried the beer before. Beau tried it on tap for the first time a few weeks back while he was in Portland and wasn't impressed, so I was determined to blow his mind with the bottled version. After battling with the wax seal for a little too long, we opened the bottle and poured. A viscous-looking mass poured out and brought up a one finger light brown head. The color of the head was different than I remembered, but other than that, things were still going well. Then I took a whiff and it smelled like a different beer.

This time around, I picked up a lot of oak right away- a smell I don't remember encountering at all before. Behind the oak were some rich aromas of raisin, dark chocolate, vanilla, burnt brown sugar and leather. Some of these were familiar smells, some were not. The smell was fantastic and had incredible depth, but it didn't quite move me like the first time around.

The taste was a bit thinner than the 2009 version, but had some great flavors of molasses and dark chocolate upfront, followed by a heavy roasted flavor, some smoke, a bit of bourbon and wet earth. The finish is slightly roasted and acidic. Overall, it was still a fantastic beer, but I was a little let down. Maybe it's a product of me trying so many beers in the past year that it's gotten very difficult to impress me. Or maybe this bottle just needed some more time to age (luckily I have one more tucked away for later). Either way, The Abyss is still my favorite beer, although now I wonder if it's grip on first place has been loosened a bit. I guess it's true that you can only fall in love for the first time once and, Abyss, you'll always be my first.

Final Grade: A+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 25

Stieglbrauerei zu Salzburg GmbH - Stiegl Gaudi Radler Shandy (Lemon)

Don't let the ridiculously long name of the beer (or the brewery) fool you, the idea behind this beer is pretty simple- mixing beer and soda. While that might sound a little weird, I experienced beer mixed with soda a few years back in Berlin and absolutely loved it. While I'm usually not a fan of mixing beer with anything, something about the beer + soda idea that the Germans have been using just works. This definitely won't work for most styles of beer, but it's a tasty concoction when done right. It's also a tasty concoction that I had never seen on this side of the Atlantic until a few weeks ago.

Stiegl Radler (I'm too lazy too type the whole thing, sue me) pours a clear honey color with a very thin white head. Within a matter of seconds, the head was totally gone, leaving a thick and syrupy looking substance in the glass. The lemon in the smell was pretty strong and smelled more like a lemon syrup or liquor than a freshly squeezed lemon. Somewhere in the background of the smell was a bit of rosemary and something that smelled like perfume.

The taste was pretty similar to the smell, with a ton of lemon jumping out right away. The flavor reminded me of the taste of a lemonhead after you get past the sour coating. The taste began to change a bit as the beer warmed and the base beer (which tasted like a light lager) began to come out a bit more. While the taste was really sweet (I mean REALLY sweet), the carbonation saved this one. When a beer gets as sweet as this one, it's very easy for it to taste syrupy. While this one got close, the carbonation was just prickly enough to keep the sweetness from sticking for too long. In the end, while this wasn't quite as good as the versions I had in Berlin, this is a fantastic light beer and a great beer for the summer.

Final Grade: B

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 24

Hanger 24 - Columbus IPA

First and foremost, I'd like to wish a happy and safe National IPA Day to everyone. Hopefully you are doing something exciting for the occasion. I chose to try an IPA from an up and coming brewery: Hangar 24. Located in Redlands, California, Hangar 24 has recently started to distribute their beers around Southern California. I had their Orange Wheat a few months back and was fairly impressed, so when I was looking for a new IPA to try for National IPA Day, their Columbus IPA caught my eye. Recently, more and more single hop IPAs have been popping up and this is one of them. A single hop IPA is a beer that uses only one hop variety instead of mixing a few together, like most IPAs do. The hop that Hangar 24 chose to showcase with this beer is the Columbus variety.

Columbus IPA pours a very hazy deep amber color with an orange hue. The head rose up quickly in the glass and took a long time to settle, which isn't something I typically see in an IPA. The smell had a nice citrus hop aroma with big notes of grapefruit pith and a bit of caramel in the background. After a few minutes though, the smell changed and became slightly less pleasant as notes of hop resin and cat (you hear me, cat) took over.

The taste, for me, was a bit off. At first, I picked up some lemon curd and grapefruit. Quickly, this was cut off by a sharp hit of pine hops. Soon after that, a taste of aspirin and pine sap rose up in my mouth. For me, the flavors didn't quite work together and the end result was a beer that felt a bit unpolished. It was far from being the worst IPA I've ever had (*cough* Kennebunkport IPA) but it was far from what I would consider to be a good IPA.

Final Grade: B-

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 25

Three Floyds Brewing Company - Apocalypse Cow

I'm usually thrilled to see a brewery trying something new. Whether it's aging an IPA in oak barrels or brewing a stout with strange ingredients, if it's a new idea, I want to try it. That said, I was a little skeptical when I read up on Three Floyds' Apocalype Cow. I loved the name but wasn't quite sure about the idea behind the beer- adding lactose to a double IPA. Lactose is a sugar that is mainly found in milk and, when added to beer, gives the beer a very creamy mouthfeel. I've had a few stouts brewed with lactose (often called "milk stouts") but I'd never seen it used in any other kind of beer. The idea of a creamy IPA sounded weird as hell, but in the spirit of trying something new, I decided to give it a try.

Apocalypse Cow (which may have the greatest label I've ever seen, by the way) pours a hazy burnt orange color with a creamy eggshell-colored head. The beer has a great double IPA smell with a bit of a creamy touch added. I got a lot of mango right away with some grapefruit and citrus hops. I also picked up something sweet that smelled like a 50/50 bar.

The taste was fantastic with some big tangerine and apricot flavors upfront, followed by a slight hit of peppery hops. The sweetness is big in this one as the finish brings a huge note of caramel malt and mango. While the taste was big and full of flavor, what really made this beer shine was the mouthfeel. The lactose gives the beer a rich and creamy feel that works perfectly with the sweetness of the beer. It's like a mango, tangerine and hop milkshake. I know that sounds gross but trust me, it just works. Cheers to Three Floyds for a very successful experiment.

Final Grade: A

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 25