San Diego Beer Blog

Great Success! After the issues that plagued their 8th anniversary celebration I haven’t returned to this Stone annual event. Time heals all wounds and I’m very happy to announce that Stone had a fantastic event. There was no line longer than 3 people and most of the breweries were on point. The free beer on the bus was an added bonus.

Jorge, Rhawnie, Gretchen and I joined up with 50 of our closest friends at O’Briens bright and early Saturday morning. After 30 minutes of Tom calling the laggers we were off on our great adventure.

We arrived at the event site 20 minutes early and noticed a large line forming. Luckily, we got to relax in the air conditioned bus and could enjoy another Alpine Ale while everyone else was stuck queuing up in the sun. I’ve come to realize that travel via a large group is the only way to truly appreciate these kinds of events.

After departing the bus we headed straight to the ticketing booth and in under 60 seconds everyone was set with their wristband worth 10 tasters. We hopped into line and made it inside in another 60 seconds. Perfect! Onward to the beer.

Beers

It will be rather impossible to give each beer we tried a complete review, so here are the Cliff notes.

• AleSmith - Lil’ Devil : goooooooood!
• Avery - White Rascal : ok, nice notes of orange and corriander
• Avery - Hog Heaven : YUM! 9.8%, we love it.
• Coronado - IPA : nice hops, tasty
• Coronado - Mermaid Red : something tastes off, not sure what
• Pasadena - Orange Grove : ‘nice’ nothing too great or bad
• Cucapa - Pale Ale : good drinkable beer, stone pale ale clone?
• Cucapa - Barley Wine : aroma is incredible, sharp at end
• La Jolla Brewhouse - IPA : nice, kind of plain
• La Jolla Brewhouse - Belgium Brown : gooood, coffee & chocolate overtones
• Lagunitas - Shutdown : tasty, 9.5%
• Mammoth Brewing - Wheat : very good, tasty Belgium’ish
• Mammoth Brewing - Double Brown : AWESOME! (my personal favorite from the day)
• Mammoth Brewing - Pilsner : clean appearance & taste, great beer.
• Moylan’s - DIPA : good
• Newport - Belgium Quad : 13%, insane, very good.
• Stone - 11th Anniversary w. Amarillo on Cask : Rad, this is fantastic
• Stone - Arrogant Bastard w. American Oak : Excellent
• Stone - IPA w. Centennial Dry Hopped : tasty, tasty, tasty
• Paulaner Brewery - Oktoberfest : very clean, nice
• Paulaner Brewery - Wheat : fantastic wheat
• San Diego Brewing - Blueberry : best smelling beer ever, tastes ok

That pretty much covers it for the beers.

Food

Stone also has many of their new sauces available for tasting. I didn’t write down any of their names or notes, but they were all great. I’m very much looking forward to seeing these available at stores. Fantastic unique tastes.

The quote of the day came from Rhawnie describing an IIPA I was drinking:

It tastes like barnyard!

Overall

That pretty much wraps it up, I’m very much looking forward to the next event.