Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine

I love me some Barley Wines, but this one's getting no love from me. The aroma is nice. It's very malty, reminiscent of buttery pie crust. The body is syrupy, and nearly cloying. The flavor isn't terribly complex for a barley wine and is too sugary. The packaging and marketing is slick though. There's practically a novel printed on the back label but it's not worth reading. All I see is hype.

Stone Vertical Epic 2007

The idea behind the Stone Vertical Epic series is totally ridiculous. The challenge is to save one VE each of the first twelve years of the new millennium, then have a vertical tasting sometime after December 12, 2012. The 2007 is number five in the series. Stone must have either been fearful of a millennium disaster or cooked this idea up after January 1, 2001 because there wasn't a VE release in 2001. There will be eleven total VEs. I don't think there are a lot of beer drinkers out there with the patience to sit on a beer for eleven years. That's an absurdly long time. Even if you have the patience to wait that long, a tasting of eleven beers is too many beers for one tasting unless you invite 30 friends and everyone gets less than a sip. With fewer people, your pallet would get dulled and drunken halfway through the tasting, thus all the patient waiting would be for naught. Eleven high alcohol beers is too much for one tasting, and it's even a waste considering several will be aged over five years. An eleven year-old brew should warrant more respect from the drinkers. However, I wouldn't turn down an invitation to a Vertical Epic tasting. It would be a lot of fun in a decadent, wasteful way. 

I couldn't wait that long to try mine, and it drank just fine. Stone's Vertical Epic 2007 is a Belgium style ale inspired by Saisons and Golden Triples. It's brewed with four malts, two hop varieties, and spices (ginger, cardamon, plus grapefruit, lemon and orange peels). I didn't pick any of those spices out of the aroma or flavor, but there is a mild citrus undertone to the flavor. The aroma was mellow and smelled like a Triple should, though it was not as sweet most Triples. The 2007 Vertical Epic is a unique beer with several characteristics more common in wine than beer. Tiny, champagne-like bubbles continuously floated up from the bottom of the glass. It was acidic, and finished very dry. After the dry finish a late, mellow tart kicked in, making my salivary glands fire off. I had never experienced that in a beer - once I thought the flavor was complete, the tart surprised me out of nowhere.  

Cape Cod Beer Tour

For being located in the liberal, progressive, and "not at all" racist Northeast, the beer scene in Cape Cod is pretty weak. You can find a liquor store here or there has one kind of Dogfish Head and some local micro offerings, but for the most part it's the Majors and Sierra Nevada that reign. It's comforting in that it reminds me of the beer scene at home (minus the bag boy barraging you with "Do you know what they call sex in Alabama?" jokes). But you know there's more to life than Sierra Nevada out there. 

I found one exception to the boring beer stores on the Cape: Kappy's Fine Wine & Liquor of Falmouth, MA. It's like Total Wine in store size and selection but with the cozy, run-down flavor of a local store. The beer isle is massive and it almost made me pass out. There are a range of brews from Dogfish Head, Smuttynose, Left Hand, Middle Ages, Boulder, Clipper City, Otter Creek, Wachusetts, along with a bunch of other New England micros that I've neither heard of nor would waste my time on. Going to Kappy's is a bit like finding a fountain of beer in the desert. I picked up Sam Adam's Triple Bock, Stone's Vertical Epic '07, a Dizzy Fizzle (DFH) Palo Santo Marron (a 12% brown ale aged in Palo Santo wood), Legacy's Hoptimus Prime, Stone Coast Batch 420 IPA, Middle Ages ImPaled Ale, and an Avery Marahaja for old times sake. Unfortunately, I have to drink all this in the like three days before I head back to Abitaland, so my posts may get a little fuzzy. Here goes the beer tour.