Stone Old Guardian (Vintages 2004 and later)

Brewed by Stone Brewing Co.
Style: Barley Wine
Escondido, California USA

I found this one very similar to the OG 2003. Turbid coppery with big white head and aroma of malt, dark fruit, cognac, and scotch. Typical barleywine taste sensations, but as usual, kicked up a notch. Wonderful.

Amber ith a lasting off-white head. Aroma of alcohol, malt and caramel. Sweet malt and alcohol flavour with plenty hops and bitterness

Hazy orange lae with a creamy white ale. Sweet vinous aroma with a bit of horseblanket. Nice candied sugar with licorice notes. Alcohol warmth marries well with the sweet hop juice. Rich bodied. Wow.

Head is initially small, frothy, off-white, mostly diminishing. Body is medium amber. Aroma is heavily hoppy (resin, grapefruit, apricot), moderately malty (cookie), lightly yeasty (dough), with a note of alcohol. Flavor is heavily sweet, moderately acidic, moderately bitter. Finish is moderately sweet, moderately acidic, heavily bitter. Full body, velvety/syrupy texture, lively carbonation, moderately alcoholic. The usual Stone-style hopfest...not much aromatic complexity, as with the previous recipe of Old Guardian. That just doesn't cut it for this style, sorry. If all you want is hops, knock yourself out. The Double Bastard has more going on, so I'd sooner recommend that over this.

22 ounce bottle, early 2006 batch, from Table and Vine in Northampton, MA (September 2006), quaffed at cellar temperature from a Maudite glass. A smallish thick, creamy off-white head forms slowly and dies similarly leaving a thick ring atop the dirty caramel-copper body, faint unstable lacing....resinous, piney hops expectedly dominate the aroma, but some creamy caramel notes liven things up and soften the acrid notes, a hint or two of raisins also add pleasure; with some warmth, cookie-sweet bready malts show up and start to block out the more interesting stuff.....on the tongue, a powerful, grainy brown sugar sweetness whallops you immediately, moderate alcohol presence following on its heels, slowly those resinous hops make their presence known and by midpalate it’s a hopmonster, getting very bitter, acidic and dry at the finish though touches of that cloying sugariness continue on, offsetting to some extent the harshness but not in a balanced or well-blended way. In fact, this whole affair is a mess of vaguely interesting concepts thrown together with lots of alcohol in the hopes that something brilliant will magically appear, but it’s instead an incoherent swirl of uncoalesced promises. Low to moderate carbonation, sticky, and quite hard for me to get down.

bottled. orange colour with a quickly-diminishing head. aroma of alcohol, stone fruit and pine needles. slight toffee and some grapefruit and then a big hit of alcohol that lingers in the mouth. just doesns’t have anything special about it

Early 2006 release. Sweet hoppy aroma. Bright orangey color, with bubbles but little head. Starts sweet, continues sweet, then some malty character comes along, and suddenly the hop that was always there actually arrives. Might need some maturity. Too late for this one.

Gentle alcohol in the aroma. Pine, earthy, sweaty, spicy, citrus hops in the aroma with an underlying malt sweetness. Clear orange colouation with off-white head that recedes to thin cover and a nice ring around the glass. Assertively hoppy. Very alcoholic. Strongly malty with a very bitter finish. Medium body. Good carbonation. Lively mouthfeel. Flavours don’t play well together. Will probably be much more integrated in a year or two. Needs to grow up. Bottle (enjoyed with beerbuzzmontreal, MartinT and Rastacouere). Thanks for this trade from eyedrinkale.