Stone 04.04.04 Vertical Epic Ale

Formerly brewed at Stone Brewing Co.
Style: Belgian Strong Ale
Escondido, California USA

Bottle, RBESG 2005 Grand Tasting. Strong aroma, verging on the unpleasant, with notes of oak, brown sugar, lime and molasses. Flavour is oaky, alcoholic and too sweet, with notes of lime and lemongrass in the background. Not a love affair for me this one.

Bottled @RBESG’05
Pale hoppy yellow, small white head. Citrusy, apricot nose. Medium to full-bodied. Sweetish grassy, some licorice there too.

Old notes finally getting entered. Bottle, gold pour. Sweet malts and bready yeasty aroma. Sweet lighter fruits, bananas, maybe a bit of grass, and apparent alcohol. Fairly light drink, decent.

alright call me crazy< but this beer has a new car smell.You know when u buy a car and its fresh, well this beer smells this way.Has some citrus flavor with a slight alcohol burn.The ride was good, not great but good.I will have more

Pours golden copper with no head. Yeasty bread-like aroma full of sugar and banana. Flavor weaker than aroma would indicate. Some banana and faint malt. Maybe starting to age already. Finishes has a strange sourness to it.

I keep getting distracted by the way this thing fizzes up whenever I get any in my mouth. (The effect is rather like that caused by the Borium powder one tries to ingest with water before having an upper GI series done.) It pours a tightly carbonated, golden liquid with a slender fizzy white hea... no wait, a film, not a head. It took me a while to nail the aroma, which scores more points for "interesting" than it does for "good." Back in the late 50’s (yeah, I’m that freakin’ old), my great-grandmother used to eat these noxious, pungent candies called SinSins, or some such. 04.04.04 smells just like the tin that the candy came in! (I do detect some old grapefruit, malt, prairie flowers, wheat-induced acidity, and Kaffir Lime Leaf [..yeah, right..] as well, but that old lady’s candy keeps coming back to me.) As noted earlier, this light-bodied ale tends to explode in the mouth in a frenzy of bubbly foam. This effect dies down once the ale has decanted (?) for a while. The flavor begins with a vinuous, sweet, doughy malt. There’s some fruit in here also - some apples and bananas and a pear - but it all seems to have sat on the counter top too long. SinSins, too. "The result is a bit like a strong Biere de Garde / Saison-esque influenced beer coupled with some aromatic Bavarian Hefeweizen style phenolic banana esters...." says Stone. Hmmm. It’s a fun drink, but methinks their ambitions got out of control. I got a whiff of the hefe (but, not the Bavarian sort) on the finish, but mainly I got some bitterness, sweet malt, anise, crushed flowers... and SinSins, of course.

7/21/2005 Update: Amazingly, the day after entering the above, the Chicago Tribune’s crossword puzzle had as a clue, "Brand of breath mint." It worked out to be SenSen.

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Had this last year but forgot to enter my ratings. I kinda sorta wish I bought several, one to have in 2004 (which I did), one to save for a couple of years, and one to save until 2012. Nice burgundian beer. Thick bready aroma and taste with some lighter fruity-ness in there (banana?). Pretty darn good, but I wish I could have waited until it aged more.

Robe blonde légèrement voilée surmontée d’une mousse blanche généreuse et parsemée de ce qu’il semble être des particules de houblon et de levure. Arômes de raisins blancs, d’épices, de malt et de levure. Saveurs de miel, d’abricot, de malt, de houblon aromatique, de levure et d’agrumes. Corps judicieux. Une saison forte en quelque sorte. Très bien!